


Crimson Red

by AleishaDreams



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Historical References, I promise, M/M, Rating May Change, Self-Discovery, Slow Build, Slow Romance, Slurs, World War II, historical racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:23:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7547719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AleishaDreams/pseuds/AleishaDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mother once told him she named him like this because it means “Brave” in Japanese.</p><p>It was supposed to be a good omen for the future, for a bright and dignified life in this new land of freedom and opportunity named United States. Their birth in this land was seen as a miracle, therefore his name should been something just as splendid as the life that was waiting for him.</p><p>Matsuoka Rin is his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been on a slump and I thought maybe posting this first chapter would make me feel better.
> 
> Un-beta'd.

His mother once told him she named him like this because it means “Brave” in Japanese.

It was supposed to be a good omen for the future, for a bright and dignified life in this new land of freedom and opportunity named United States. Their birth in this land was seen as a miracle, therefore his name should been something just as splendid as the life that was waiting for him.

Matsuoka Rin is his name, he is fifteen years old, and he is a simple teenager who doesn’t really care about “bright futures” and “a dignified life” right now. All he cares about at this moment is to find his friend and neighbor of black hair and teal eyes because the little shit decided to play a prank on him, but such thing is proving to be harder than he first thought.

The endless alleys of their neighborhood are practically a maze, and his friend knows them as well as the creases of his palm, **with** closed eyes. Every time he thinks he is about to spot his friend, he is encountered with an empty corner, a big pot, or simple rubbish behind shadows.

He sighs one last time after finding yet another empty crook behind a wall where he had thought he saw someone, and looked up to the sky. Warm colors paint the vast sky, from orange to magenta, coloring the white clouds with hot strokes of fire. The sun is about to hide behind the houses and he still has to find the other boy. If this continues like this, his mother will probably be mad at him.

“Sousuke!” He calls for his friend with a loud voice. “I’m sure you keep moving around!”

When he doesn’t receive an answer, his lips form a little pout and his hands ball to his sides.

“I’m serious, Sousuke! My mom is gonna kill me if I don’t get home soon!”

The wind brings no answer to his claims, and Rin starts to wonder if Sousuke is actually nearby. What if he isn’t? What if his friend is stuck somewhere? What if he is lost? More and more dangerous thoughts invade his head, with really vivid images of his friend in the middle of tall buildings and surrounded by the darkness of the night. What should Rin do? He should call for an adult! And tell them that Sousuke—

“Hey!”

A sudden attack comes from behind him, a strong shove that tosses him in the air but he is able to maintain his balance on his feet. His heart is racing without control as he looks to his back, finding teal eyes and a big grin smiling at him.

“Did I scare you?”

His name is Yamazaki Sousuke, he is also fifteen years old although a few months older than Rin, and he is Rin’s best friend even though he can be a major asshole to him sometimes.

“Shut up!” Rin shouts, glaring at him with all the anger he can muster right now. “You are such a jerk, Sousuke.”

“Now, now.” Sousuke slowly moves his hands up and down, the same way the farmers do to calm unrested horses on the plains. “Let’s just go before you piss your pants.”

“Ugh! I don’t know why I’m your friend anymore.”

Rin starts his way back to his home. Sousuke follows him with his own rapid steps behind him.

“That’s because I’m irresistible, Rin.”

Sousuke grins at him, his smirk wide and playful. To finish his manly act he shoves Rin once again, although this time it isn’t as strong as the previous push. Rin decides to not answer Sousuke’s provocation for a friendly fight, his thoughts occupied of his mother’s probable reprimand waiting for him. He is supposed to practice his English after dinner, but it seems he won’t be able to eat all he wants because learning English is way more important, or so his mom insists. He doesn’t really understand why, taking into consideration that everyone in their small city speaks Japanese and he doesn’t have any plans of moving out any time soon. But that is how mothers are, Rin guesses, because Sousuke’s mom is the same with English. It’s funny, in a weird way, because none of their parents speak said language in the first place.

Still, it’s nice to try to have conversations in English with Sousuke. They don’t understand completely what the other kid is saying but it's fun. Rin’s tongue feels weird with the way the “R” is said in English, and he doesn’t understand who thought it was a brilliant idea to have “ _read”_ in present and _“read”_ in past written the same but read differently – seriously, what were they thinking?

They arrive to an alley that divides in two roads, where he and Sousuke go separate ways to each their home. Sousuke lives a few blocks down the street from Rin’s home. Rin looks at his friend, who stops walking beside him. The other kid is silent, his eyebrows in a frown, and his fists balled up. He looks angry, but the veil of doubt covers his eyes, revealing his real emotions.

“Sorry,” Sousuke says in the end. “For scaring you.”

Rin gulps down the knot in his throat.

“You didn’t scare me!” He yells, “You don’t have to say anything.”

To that, Sousuke relaxes, with a smile full of determination once again.

“Alright,” he agrees, offering his fist. Rin corresponds the smile, bumping his fist with Sousuke’s. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, tomorrow.”

Each boy takes a different way without looking behind them, as usual.

Rin decides to run off the last stretch, wanting to get as early to his house in hopes of preventing his mother from getting mad at him. He sees his house in the horizon in a matter of minutes. It’s kind of small with only one story but with a big garden, and made of wood. The house is so small he has to share room with his younger sister – Gou – while his parents have another room. It isn’t as bad as it may sound. Gou is clean after all. Though sometimes she can be a little too nosy with his stuff.

“I’m home!” Rin announces as soon as he opens the door, taking off his shoes and leaves them at the entrance.

A girl of red hair runs to receive him, all smiles and bright crimson eyes. It’s his little sister Gou. She is only a few months younger than him. She is stubborn and determined, and she doesn’t let anyone talk over her which, sometimes, causes her trouble with the other kids.

“Brother!” She says with a voice full of sunshine, “Dad is here!”

A spark of joy burns inside of Rin’s heart.

He immediately runs to the dining room with his sister. Their father is a fisherman. He usually spends a week or so in the open sea to fish, but sometimes he fishes in close waters. Two weeks ago he went to the open ocean to fish, having come back just tonight.

“Dad!” Rin greets as soon as he enters the room.

“Rin, my little man!” His father says.

The dining room also serves as a living room, leaving the low table out at all times. A woman of red, long hair is sitting next to a man of short, brown hair, who wears glasses; they are Rin’s parents. Rin sits next to his father, and the man ruffles his hair.

“How are you, Rin?” His father asks.

“Fine! I was with Sousuke just now.”

“Huh, I see! That boy is still as gruff as ever?”

Rin snorts before answering, “Yes! He is! You just left for two weeks, dad!”

The man laughs loudly. Rin’s mother serves the boy a plate of food, with a little smile on her lips that, for some reason, makes Rin’s stomach cringe. Most of the time, Rin’s mother is a joyful woman, she even says jokes, she is calm and happy, although strict with her children’s education. But Rin has recently noticed that, sometimes, his mother looks taciturn even if she is smiling. It happens when his father comes back. He doesn’t understand why, his father returning is supposed to be something to celebrate! He spends too much time outside their home to be gloom when he is back.

“How long are you going to stay, dad?” Gou asks the man, after taking a sip of her tea.

It’s almost imperceptible, but it still happens. Their father’s smile falters a little, for just a mere second, but it’s enough for Rin to see it.

“Tomorrow,” his father answers.

Silence falls over all of them, like a thick, dark cloud of smoke. Suddenly the room feels too hot, and Rin is sure it isn’t because of the food he is eating.

“Oh,” Gou says softly, her red eyes lowering to see her cup of tea.

“But you just came back,” Rin voices, “You can’t leave tomorrow, you just came back!”

“This time I’ll be gone for two months,” his father continues speaking, as if Rin hadn’t said anything, “So you must be good children to your mother and—“

“You just came back! You can’t leave!” Rin insists, feeling his heartbeat hitting hard in his chest.

“Rin!” His father reprimands him, his voice serious, “Control yourself, Rin! You can’t have this attitude towards me, your father!”

Rin wants to say a lot of things. He wants to yell at his father. He wants to tell him how much the whole family misses him when he is gone. He wants to tell his father how Gou constantly asks when he is coming back. He wants to tell his father how much his mother sighs while looking at the sea in the morning when she is hanging the clothes to dry. He wants to tell him how much time Rin spends thinking about him.

But, instead of all that, Rin stands up and runs to the entrance, putting on his shoes to exit their home.

He runs and runs under the dark night sky, feeling the cool air hitting his face and playing with his hair. Rin runs to the only place he can think of in the middle of his distress. A few blocks away from his home down the street.

When Rin sees the little house, small and made of wood like his, he turns around to the backside of it to find a little window with the lights on. He gets closer and peeks a little, being careful of not being seen from the inside. Through the window, he sees Sousuke sitting on his futon, with two books on his laps and a pencil in a hand. His face is frowned in deep concentration. Rin worries his lower lip a little before softly tapping the glass with a finger. It takes him two tries before Sousuke notices the sound and looks to the window, his teal eyes widening when seeing the red hair. He stands up and goes to the window, opening it as silently as possible.

“What are you doing here, Rin?” Sousuke asks, whispering.

“Can I come inside?”

Sousuke frowns, confused, but he moves to the side to let him climb up the window to enter. Once Rin is inside, Sousuke closes the window, and walks to the door to close it too.

“What happened?” Sousuke questions.

“My dad is back,” Rin answers, sitting down on Sousuke’s futon, giving him his back. Sousuke stays silent for a moment, until he sits next to Rin.

“And?” Sousuke insists.

“He is going away tomorrow.”

His friend hums in acknowledgment, but doesn’t comment further in the issue, and Rin appreciates that.

“Do you want to study together?” Sousuke asks, taking one of the books. Rin simply nods.

They study between whispers and murmurs, correcting each other with different words, and making fun of each other when the pronunciation sounds too bad. It isn’t until Sousuke’s mother knocks on his door to tell him to go to sleep that Rin realizes he doesn’t feel like going back to his home yet, but he can’t really ask Sousuke for permission to stay because that would be too much. Maybe he can wander a little around the house until he sees all the lights off to sneak inside his room.

“I better get going,” Rin announces, standing up and stretching his arms to shake away the slumber creeping in his body, “See you tomorrow.”

He walks to the window, but is stopped when his wrist is taken with a strong grip. Rin looks behind him, finding teal eyes fixed on him.

“You can stay,” Sousuke says.

It wouldn’t be that hard to sleep here. Sousuke is an only son so he doesn’t have to share his room with anyone else, Rin could perfectly pass the night here and go back to his house early in the morning, escaping through the window.

Rin nods quickly, accepting the invitation, and Sousuke frees his wrist. Sousuke walks to his closet and takes out some clothes for Rin to sleep with.

Once they are settled in the futon, Sousuke turns off the light and lies down next to Rin. Sousuke is with his back down while Rin is on his stomach. Neither of them closes their eyes, but they aren’t looking at each other. Crickets are heard through the window in the silence of the night, and the hotness of the summer lingers on their skin. Sticky and uncomfortable.

“Hey, Sousuke,” Rin calls his friend suddenly, when the silence overwhelms his heart, turning his face towards the boy. Sousuke hums again. “Why is your dad a farmer?”

“I don’t know, Rin,” Sousuke replies, facing Rin, “Why is your dad a fisher?”

“It would be better if he was a farmer like yours. Like that, he would stay all year long with us.”

Rin loves his father very much, he really does, but he doesn’t have a lot of memories about him. It always has been his mother, Gou, and him alone. Of course, Sousuke and his family are also very special for Rin. He can’t count with the fingers of his hands how many times Sousuke’s father has helped him when necessary. Like that time when their ball ended up in a house’s roof. It was Sousuke’s dad the one who climbed the house to retrieve the ball. It was also Sousuke’s dad who taught them how to shave. Everything would be better if Rin’s father was a farmer like Sousuke’s.

“Maybe,” Sousuke replies, probably because he doesn’t know what else to say.

In the end, Rin doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but the next time he blinks open his eyes Sousuke is deeply sleeping, and he hears voices outside the door.

“Sousuke didn’t say anything, so we didn’t see anything strange.” It’s Sousuke’s mom voice.

“It’s alright, Yamazaki-san.”

Rin tenses when he hears that voice. It’s his mom.

He closes his eyes when the door slowly opens, letting the light enter to the room, and pretends to be asleep.

“Ah, there he is,” Sousuke’s mom says.

“I’m sorry to bother you with this, Yamazaki-san,” Rin’s mom answers.

“Don’t say that, Matsuoka-san. It’s always a pleasure to have Rin with us.”

“But not like this.”

Rin’s mother sounds a little angry. He is afraid of being the reason for such thing. He expects his mom to wake him up, but is surprised when the door closes again. Rin opens his eyes, looking intently at the door.

“Rin is mad at his father,” his mother explains. The other woman hums. “Because he is going away tomorrow again, this time for two months.”

“That’s a lot of time.”

“It is.”

The two women stay silent. Rin for a moment wonders if they have gone away, until his mother continues speaking.

“I understand him. Why he is mad. I’m mad too.”

Rin is honestly surprised by this.

“We all miss my husband. And I know he has to work to feed us, but it’s still hard to deal with this.”

Sousuke’s mom doesn’t reply.

“And this time is for two months. Two months! How am I supposed to take care of two children by myself for so long?”

“You are strong, Matsuoka-san,” the other woman finally speaks, “You have been doing great all this time. I’m sure you can handle this.”

There is a sob at the other side of the door. Rin can tell it’s his mother.

“There, there…” Yamazaki-san says, with a calming voice, “Leave Rin with us tonight. I will send him off your way after he has some breakfast.”

“Yes, thank you, Yamazaki-san,” Rin’s mom’s voice sounds broken.

After that, the two voices are replaced by steps going away. Rin sighs deeply, closing his eyes to try to fall asleep again.

“Rin.”

But a voice distracts him, making him open his red eyes, finding teal ones looking at him. Sousuke doesn’t say anything; he just keeps his gaze with Rin for a few long moments.

“You are like family to me.”

Rin’s eyes widen at the declaration, and everything he can hear is his own heart bumping loudly inside him.

“Yeah, you too.” Rin replies.

The next day, Sousuke’s mom wakes them up, saying it’s time to have breakfast. Sousuke at first tries to explain why Rin is there, but his mother silences him telling him that breakfast is going to get cold if they don’t hurry up.

When Rin comes back to his home, his father isn’t there anymore. When Rin comes back to his home, Gou asks him where he slept. When Rin comes back to his home, his mother smiles at him and tells him to not disappear like that again.

When Rin comes back to his home, Rin promises his mother he won’t ever leave her and Gou alone.

 

 

 

“Hey, Rin.”

Sousuke calls him, but Rin is busy picking up another rock to throw it at the ocean, so he doesn’t look at his friend.

“Yeah?” He replies, tossing the pebble to the waves of the blue sea.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Rin finally looks at his friend to see what kind of face he is making. Sousuke looks serious, like he has been thinking about this question for a long time. Not feeling able to sustain the intense feeling in Sousuke’s eyes, Rin looks away to the floor, thinking about choosing another rock.

He hasn’t think about it. About his future or anything like that. Though he knows he should probably start thinking of it. They aren’t little kids anymore.

Rin won’t be a stupid fisherman. That is for sure.

“I don’t know,” Rin says, shrugging his shoulders. He picks up a rock, throwing it to the ocean.

“I’m going to join the army,” Sousuke says.

Rin forgets everything about the rock, immediately looking at Sousuke to see if he is joking. His stomach lurches. Sousuke isn’t looking at him anymore, but at the ocean.

The army? Why would Sousuke want to join the army? Sure, they used to play every now and then about war and being brave soldiers defeating the evil bad guys, but that was just pretend, something completely different from real life. People die at real life.

But, mainly, Sousuke would have to go away.

“Why the army?” Rin asks.

“I want to protect my family. My dad, my mom…”

Sousuke finally looks at Rin. His eyes are intense. Rin’s heart roars with the same fierceness as the ocean.

“I want this to be a safe place for everyone.” Sousuke finishes.

Rin looks away to the ocean, seeing the waves crush in the distance to come more gently to his naked feet, submerging them in the cold water. The white sand covers his feet, burying his toes.

Whatever. Sousuke can do whatever he wants. Besides, it won’t be until years for Sousuke to be able to enter the army, surely with due time he will learn what a stupid idea that is, and he will decide to go to the local college.

“How do you want to be a soldier when you can’t even beat me in jan-ken-pon?” Rin decides to joke.

Sousuke smiles. “I beat you yesterday in that race, though.”

“Ah! That’s because you cheated!”

Rin kicks Sousuke in the shin, while he laughs at him.

 

 

 

The gentle bubbling coming from the pot relaxes his body. It's like a lullaby being sung close to his ear to drift him to sleep. The delicious smell of the curry covers him like a warm blanket of soft cotton.

 “I’m hungry, mom! When is the food going to be ready?” Gou asks, jumping a little in her sitting place.

“Just a little bit more, Gou,” the woman answers patiently. She movies the wooden spoon to mix the ingredients better.

Gou, Sousuke, and Rin are sitting at the table, all of them anxiously waiting for the food to be served. It’s a common occurrence for Sousuke to have dinner with them, just as common for Rin to do so in the Yamazaki household.

“’Kou’! Mom, I told you to call me ‘Kou’!”

“’Gou’ is a really pretty name, Gou. Why would you want to change it?”

“It sounds like a boy’s name.” Gou pouts, crossing her arms. Rin snorts.

“Well, that’s your name. You should deal with it,” he says.

“Look who is talking, RinRin!” Gou sings at him. Rin is about to yell at her, but then he notices Sousuke covering his mouth trying not to laugh, so he decides to push Sousuke better.

“Children, please!” Their mother tries to appease them when she sees things are getting too messy. “The curry is done.”

With the news, all three children stay quiet, waiting for their dishes to be served. They promptly begin eating once the woman sits down with them. It’s delicious. As always, Rin’s mother’s curry is the best in the world. Rin admits he may be a little biased on that.

“Are you staying the night, Sousuke-kun?” The woman asks, looking at the boy with a smile.

“If you allow me, Matsuoka-san,” Sousuke answers; cordial as always.

“Of course, Sousuke-kun. It’s always nice to have you here. Besides, I’m sure Rin would appreciate the company at night.”

“I’m more than fine at night, thanks!” Rin replies.

Whenever Rin’s father is away, Gou sleeps with their mother, leaving Rin all by himself in their bedroom. It’s nice to have the room alone, but he admits – only to himself – that the room feels a little empty without another person with him. Besides, Sousuke is his best friend, so they always have a good time when they are together.

His mother shakes her head with an amused smile. “Alright, Rin,” she says, “But please be nice to Sousuke-kun either way. And don’t forget to study your English.”

Rin doesn’t answer; he gently shoves Sousuke with a shoulder. Sousuke shoves him back playfully.

As promised, Rin and Sousuke study their English lessons in Rin’s room after taking a bath. The room is small as every other room in the house. It has a closet, two beds, and there is a picture of the Matsuoka family on one wall. The boys are lying on a bed, reading Rin’s books and notes. The sun is already out and the sky is black, so they have to use a lamp to light up the tiny room. Rin is concentrating on his notes when Sousuke groans tiredly. He looks at his friend, finding him scratching his eyes.

“I can’t anymore,” Sousuke says, flopping his face on the bed. Rin rolls his eyes at him.

“We aren’t done.”

“I am.”

Rin clicks his tongue, grabbing the eraser to scratch out a word he wrote wrongly. “If you can’t handle this, then you can’t handle the army,” Rin jokes.

He expects Sousuke to reply with a snarky comment, or even kicking Rin on the shin, but the he is surprised when all he gets from his friend is silence. Rin looks at him. Sousuke is still on the same position when he sighs. He props himself up on his elbows, grabs the pencil, and continues with his work.

Does this mean that Sousuke still wants to join the forces?

Rin worries his lower lip. He decides to not say anything about it.

After an hour of studying, Rin lends Sousuke some sleeping clothes to finally call it a day and lay down on the bed, under the thin sheet. They have two beds, but they have always shared Rin’s since forever, because Sousuke insists that sleeping on Gou’s bed would be weird. The room is submerged in darkness now that the lamp is off, but Rin knows that Sousuke is still awake.

“Hey, Sousuke,” Rin calls the other boy. Sousuke hums. “Do you still wanna join the army?”

“Yes,” Sousuke replies without a doubt.

Rin doesn’t answer, turning around to give his back to Sousuke. He knows he is being unfair to his friend, that Sousuke can do whatever he wants, and that he should support any decision Sousuke takes. But this decision in particular makes Rin’s stomach cringe in fear. He can’t help it when he imagines Sousuke alone in the middle of the war, dirty and harmed, far away from the safety of home.

“I should go with you,” Rin suggests, feeling acid in his mouth as he spits the words.

“No!” Sousuke immediately says, sitting brusquely in the bed. Rin looks at him, surprised because of the sudden movement. Sousuke is staring at him, his fists are balled up with force. “You can’t join the army.”

“Huh? You can but I can’t? What kind of bullshit is that?!” Rin sits too. Rage travels up from his stomach to his heart.

“Because if you go, I’m—!” Sousuke begins, but his words die almost immediately, looking away to not have to face Rin. “If you go, your mother and Gou will be alone.”

To that, Rin can’t argue. Sousuke is right. If Rin were to go join the military force, the two most important women in his life would be alone; and he promised himself he would never do that. But then why does Sousuke want to go? Is it really that important? Back then he said he wants to join the army so he can protect his loved ones, but how could he do that if he will be so far away? It doesn’t make sense to Rin. The only thing Rin can make off of this mess is that Rin will be left behind while Sousuke goes away from him, and that hurts.

Rin gives his back to Sousuke again, covering his body to his shoulders with the sheet. Sousuke sighs.

“Rin,” he calls him, “Rin, don’t cry.”

Usually, Rin would claim that he isn’t crying, even though fat tears are falling down his eyes, but tonight Rin doesn’t feel like it. Tonight it doesn’t feel correct to claim such a thing when he is hurting so much.

Seeing that Rin doesn’t say anything else, Sousuke tries again, his voice worried. “Rin? Are you alright?”

A warm and big hand rests on Rin’s shoulder, making him tremble. Sousuke softly shakes his shoulder, trying to get his attention, but Rin is determined to not look at him. Not yet. He is startled when his body is turned around with sudden force, his back hitting the bed. Red eyes open widely, surprised, looking at Sousuke who is gazing back at him with such intense eyes that Rin thinks he has lost his ability to talk. The hot tears finally fall from his eyes to the bed, traveling down his temples. For a moment he is afraid Sousuke will make fun of him.

“I’m sorry, Rin,” Sousuke says instead. Rin can’t breathe for a second. “But it’s really important for me. To protect everyone, mom, dad…”

Sousuke’s hand that is still gripping Rin’s shoulder tightens. A red blush crosses Sousuke’s face out of nowhere. Rin doesn’t know why, but hot embarrassment pools in his stomach.

Sousuke has always been bigger and taller than Rin. Always. That is nothing new. But right now Rin feels so small in comparison to Sousuke, now that his shadow is covering him, with the moonlight touching Sousuke’s tanned skin, and his body over Rin. At what moment did he start to look like this, and why didn’t Rin notice before?

“Hey, Rin,” Sousuke’s voice is so soft it feels like a warm wind caressing his cold skin. It’s so gentle Rin feels his skin burn. “Would you really go to war with me?”

Rin slowly nods. Of course he would. What kind of question is that? Didn’t he just say he should go with Sousuke to the army?

“Why, Rin?”

He opens his mouth. Not a sound goes out of it. Rin finds himself unable to give a clear answer. He could reply that he doesn’t want Sousuke to go to war because it’s dangerous, but something inside him tells him it’s a thing deeper than that, something that he can’t comprehend just yet because he doesn’t have a name for it. All Rin knows right now is that he doesn’t want Sousuke to go away.

“I like being with you,” Rin decides to reply. Sousuke’s teal eyes widen a little at his response, the red color of his cheeks intensifying. It must be contagious, because Rin feels his own face turning hot. What an embarrassing thing to say, he would admit.

“I also like being with you,” his friend says after a moment of silence.

It’s a simple sentence, a simple line of a few normal and common words, but for some reason they make Rin’s stomach jump, and his head feel dizzy. What surprises Rin the most is that it isn’t a bad feeling. On contrary, Rin finds this weird sensation nice.

Sousuke looks like he wants to say something. He looks directly to the red eyes with his eyebrows creased. Rin is dying to know what it is. Nonetheless, Sousuke doesn’t say anything. He sighs and lies down on the bed again, next to Rin, leaving him with heated skin and a hasty heart.

“Good night, Rin,” Sousuke says.

“Good night, Sousuke,” Rin replies.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd.

Nothing is the same since that night.

Sousuke’s presence has become too overwhelming. Too big. It demands Rin’s full attention even though he knows that isn’t true. Sousuke is the same as always; sarcastic, friendly, kind of an asshole but with that soft-spot for everyone close to him. His friend hasn’t changed at all but, for Rin, Sousuke looks like someone completely different. Rin feels like someone completely different.

Multiple times Rin has discovered himself staring too much, or thinking about how good Sousuke smells, and one faithful day – when said boy grabbed him by the arm to prevent him from falling from a trench – Rin wondered how it would feel like to have Sousuke hug him strongly. It feels weird, and he would feel weirder if it wasn’t for the fact that he, too, has caught Sousuke staring at him. It’s reassuring to know he isn’t the only one feeling strange.

“My dad is coming back in a week,” Rin comments.

“I see,” Sousuke replies back.

The sun is warm on his skin, with the gentle breeze with a taste of ocean softly playing with his hair. The sky is blue without a trace of clouds at sight, suggesting a clear day full of promising adventure. Rin is walking at the top of a stone fence, his arms are extended for a better balance, and his eyes are fixed on the small width of the fence. Sousuke is walking just beside him, but on the floor. The ocean is to the other side of the fence, singing its eternal melody with the breaking waves.

“Are you excited?” Sousuke asks.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, shrugging his shoulders a little, “I guess. He is probably leaving again, so it shouldn’t matter that much. But Gou is excited.”

“What about your mom?”

Rin stops walking, turning his face to see the blue ocean that never sleeps; wild, uncontrollable, restless, and powerful. Taking a deep breathe, Rin tries to remember how his mother has been acting these last days.

“I don’t know,” he says when he doesn’t find a correct answer. “Maybe she is the same as me.”

“Maybe.”

They stop talking, letting the ocean fill the silence between them. Rin knows some things should be talked about, for healthy purposes he guesses, but sometimes silence is what someone needs, and he is thankful Sousuke knows this. The majority of time they both talk non-stop about everything and nothing, but there are moments when they fall in complete silence and it feels just right. Like it’s the correct thing to do at the time. Sousuke will never push Rin to talk if he knows Rin isn’t ready, but Rin sometimes will push Sousuke to talk because the boy most of the time thinks it’s meaningless or because he doesn’t want to cause trouble.

“Hey, Rin,” Sousuke calls him, so he turns around to see him. Sousuke is, once again, staring at him with attentive eyes. It's weird to look at him from above. “What are you going to do when you grow up?”

Rin frowns, finding strange the unrelated question out of nowhere. He hasn’t think about it at all since last time Sousuke asked him the same thing. He has been too busy living life, studying English, and feeling pleasurably weird around his friend.

“I don’t know,” he admits, “My mom keeps talking about College, but I don’t know what I could major in. And I guess it’s the local College.”

Sousuke smiles at that, softly and content. “Satisfied” Rin would say.

“So you will stay here?”

Again, it’s an odd question to make, but it’s even stranger when Rin recognizes the almost imperceptible trace of an emotion in there.

Hope.

Sousuke hopes Rin will stay here.

For what? Rin doesn’t know, but he suspects what answer Sousuke wants.

“Yes,” Rin says.

He is immediately pulled over, Sousuke carrying him like a sack of rice over his shoulder. Rin yells because of the brusque treatment while his friend laughs loudly, freely, at him, swirling in circles. He would continue screaming at Sousuke, but his laugh ends up making him join in the ridiculous frenzy of happiness.

When Sousuke finally puts him down, Rin has already some tears in his eyes that he cleans immediately before Sousuke can see them.

“I’m glad.”

But when Sousuke speaks his mind, Rin stops what he is doing, looking at him. Sousuke is still smiling that kind of beam, the kind of gentle smile that makes Rin’s stomach jump higher than usual.

“I’m glad you are staying here,” Sousuke continues, looking away and scratching his neck. He seems to be suddenly embarrassed of his words. “Like that… like that I will know where to come back.”

His heart stops just to start screaming loudly inside his chest. For some reason the only thing he wants is assure Sousuke that yes he will stay here if that means he will come back.

“Yes, I will wait for you,” Rin says. His whole body is trembling.

Sousuke visibly gulps. The teal eyes never break contact with the red ones.

“I will come back for you.”

Something in the back of Rin’s head tells him something more it’s happening right here. This isn’t just a simple promise made between two best friends. It definitely feels different. He suspects Sousuke is feeling the same.

But Rin doesn’t know how to process it all, so he simply looks away before Sousuke’s eyes burn him further.

 

 

“Are you sure you want to stay?”

Sousuke’s deep voice asks in the middle of the dark room. The moonlight enters through the open window, and the only song they have is the crickets of the night, and their own breaths. They are lying on Sousuke’s futon and, for the first time ever that Rin remembers, they are looking at each other, on their sides to do so.

“Stop asking, Sousuke. I already said I’m going to stay and I’m going to stay,” Rin responds. His tone of voice is more curt than he intended to. Thankfully, Sousuke doesn’t look offended.

It feels weird, strange, odd. This unknown feeling of his hands tingling, his thoughts running at a high pace, and his skin burning. It’s strange, yet Rin is in an almost constant desire to experience it, and the only way he knows of finding it it’s when he is with Sousuke. It’s weird, mainly because he knows Sousuke is looking for the same thing. It’s easy to guess for Rin, thanks to Sousuke’s multiple stares and lingering silences.

And the touches.

The casual touches Sousuke gives him, like grabbing his wrist, touching his hair, a pat on his back, and each touch makes Rin’s body ignite like a fire that he has to control because he is afraid of getting permanently burnt. But lately the touches don’t feel casual anymore. They feel deliberated, planned, intended.

This time it isn’t any different, when Sousuke’s hand slowly travels to Rin’s hair, tucking a red lock behind his ear. Rin feels his lungs stopping working for a second, freezing in time as soon as Sousuke’s fingertips touch his ear and trails down for a moment through his jawline.

Rin trembles. Sousuke must have seen it because he gulps, licking his lips before speaking. “Your dad is coming tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“You should—“

Rin doesn’t let him finish, grabbing Sousuke’s arm tightly with a hand to silence him. It works in a second as Sousuke closes his mouth, staring at Rin with wide teal eyes.

“I’m staying,” Rin affirms. Sousuke nods.

Slowly, with the weight of a thousand questions and doubts, Sousuke gets closer to Rin. He looks at him, but doesn’t do anything else to prevent it or to get away, the red eyes staring at the teal ones. It feels like the whole process takes an eternity, but Rin is sure it ends in a matter of seconds. Soon Sousuke is so close that Rin can feel the warmth from his body.

It feels weird, and it’s driving Rin out of his mind. Mind that turns white when he sees Sousuke licking his lips again.

“Rin,” he says. Rin doesn’t answer, but it’s clear that his full attention is on him when his crimson eyes are wide and fixed on him.

Rin nods, not really sure to what he is agreeing to – Sousuke didn’t even ask something – but it’s enough for Sousuke to lean in, closing his eyes and joining their lips in a kiss.

It lasts only a second.

Rin doesn’t get to close his eyes because it abruptly ends as soon as it begun, but it still makes Rin’s lips turn hot and quiver. By his part, Sousuke looks beyond embarrassed, as if he is wishing Earth to swallow him whole to never ever resurface. The teal eyes don’t look at Rin, instead they are roaming around the room without knowing what to do.

What a mess, Rin thinks. If Sousuke didn’t know what to do afterwards he shouldn’t have kissed him in the first place. This isn’t how Rin pictured his first kiss. Much less with his best friend. But that isn’t important right now, what matters now is how his heart has exploded into a colorful rainbow of fireworks, and how his lips are tingling.

So Rin licks his lips, and kisses Sousuke. His friend freezes, his body tensing in surprise that it’s prolonged when Rin doesn’t pull back. A trembling hand holds his arm strongly, making Rin himself shudder and hum. Sousuke is the one to break the kiss, slowly like he doesn’t want to, and looks away immediately. His cheeks are the color of the bright blood, red in embarrassment.

“Sorry,” Sousuke murmurs, confusing Rin with the word, as he removes his hand from Rin’s arm. Sorry for what?

Rin’s doubts are cleared when he sees Sousuke crossing his legs, trying to cover his lower part with the sheet. Looking away, Rin feels embarrassed not because he thinks Sousuke’s reflex is, but because he doesn’t know how to react to it. It’s normal if it happens, Rin knows this, but either way it’s something new that he has never encountered before in someone else.

Still, Rin shakes his head in hopes of calming his friend.

“Let’s sleep,” he suggests. Sousuke nods.

But even if Rin suggested it, he can’t fall asleep thanks to his hasty heartbeat that won’t stop running without control against his chest, hurting in a good way that Rin declares himself addicted.

The next day Rin wakes up to a Sousuke looking at him, who probably has just awakened too, and he feels like smiling to him so he does. His heart flutters when Sousuke smiles back for a moment to later kiss him softly again.

Rin goes back to his home after having breakfast. He gets the news that his father hasn’t come back yet. It’s normal for the trip to get delayed a little, therefore Rin doesn’t think much of it. Besides, he has better things to think of, like how good it felt to kiss Sousuke and how much he wants to do it again. As soon as possible.

 

 

One day turns to two, then to three and finally to two weeks.

And during all this time, Rin feels like he has been living in a dream. He and Sousuke hang out as usual, they still compete about everything – running, swimming, eating, just name it – they still go to the ocean to throw rocks at it, they still prank each other whenever they can. The only difference now is that they kiss every now and then, between laughs, under a tree’s shadow, behind hidden walls, covered by the sheets of Rin’s bed, or anywhere where they could do it without being bothered.

It naturally happens, without planning, as if it was the most normal thing to do with someone, but neither of them questions it. Why would they? The only thing they know is that it feels good – correct – to do so.

Sousuke and Rin are resting on the latter’s bed, lying on their sides to be able to see each other. The room is dark, but Sousuke’s eyes are bright and shining, hypnotizing Rin further to the depths of the teal ocean his eyes are.

“What has said your mom about your dad?” Sousuke asks him. Rin frowns a little bothered by the way Sousuke breaks the calm atmosphere they had.

“Nothing. I guess she is a little worried, but that’s normal,” Rin shrugs.

He honestly hasn’t thought much about his father’s trip. It’s nothing weird for the travel back to be delayed, so Rin doesn’t understand why Sousuke is so persistent on that subject. At any case, they both have been busy with this “thing” they just discovered. Why bother to think of anything else?

And, Rin must admit, he is still a little mad at his dad.

“And aren’t you too?” Sousuke insists.

“No, I’m not. It wouldn’t be the first time dad arrives later than what he said, so… whatever.”

Rin feels uncomfortable. He doesn’t like to where this conversation is going. He would prefer better to kiss Sousuke, but the tension in the air doesn’t let him do it.

A warm touch on his hand brings him back to the present. It’s Sousuke’s fingertips, caressing the back of Rin’s hand softly, tentatively, as if Sousuke isn’t sure he should be doing this. To clear any doubt inside of Sousuke’s mind, Rin offers him a smile, getting closer while doing so. Seeing this, Sousuke gets braver and takes Rin’s hand, interlacing their fingers.

An embarrassed smile crosses Rin’s lips, trying to conceal a nervous laugh, but he isn’t that sure it’s working. It seems to be enough for Sousuke to relax, though, because soon he is smiling too.

“Good night, Rin,” he says.

“Sleep well, Sousuke,” he responds.

They close their eyes like that. Holding hands and hearing each other breathe peacefully.

When the sun goes out, they have breakfast in company of Gou and Rin’s mother, and after that Sousuke goes back to his own home. They don’t make plans to see each other that day, but it’s bound to happen sooner or later when either of them goes to the other boy’s house.

In the meantime, Rin decides to organize his room a little. Gou has been sleeping in their mother’s room with her, but their father is probably coming home any day now and Rin has been a little more laid back about the cleaning duty of the bedroom. He takes off the bed’s sheets. A breeze of scented air reaches his nose. It’s a scent that Rin recognizes easily. It’s Sousuke’s. Lately the boy has been sleeping over more nights – and vice versa, Rin sleeping at Sousuke’s – so the room eventually started to smell like him. Even himself, Rin, has begun to embrace Sousuke’s personal scent on his clothes and body.

Rin smiles, but feels ridiculous when he remembers he is alone in the room. Taking the dirty sheet in his arms, he makes his way to the laundry room walking through the kitchen. In there he finds his mother washing the dishes, looking to the horizon in the window. Rin stops his steps to stare at the woman. The whole week his mom has been acting differently, it’s evident she is worried for her husband, and Rin doesn’t blame her, but he still wonders why this time it feels different from other moments in their lives.

Maybe the woman felt when Rin stepped inside the kitchen, because then she talks.

“The sky seems to be a little dark, doesn’t it?”

Rin stays there, wondering what his mother is talking about, until he peeks from his place through the window in front of the woman. The sky indeed is a little gray, and in the horizon can be seen darker clouds. Rain is about to happen, Rin guesses, but he doesn’t understand why his mom would comment on such a simple thing.

“Yes, it does,” he still replies.

“It doesn’t look like a good idea to wash the laundry today.”

So that’s it. The laundry. She probably saw Rin’s bed sheets and remembered she has to do the laundry.

“No, it isn’t a good idea.”

With that, his mom stays quiet. Rin takes that as his cue to walk away to the laundry room.

 

 

The sky didn’t lie with its darkness, but Rin’s prophecy of a rain wasn’t accurate either. Instead of the rain he was expecting, a storm starts to roar furiously, like a mad dragon trying to destroy the land because its treasure was stolen, the winds are wild, and the thunder resound like a giant’s steps, not to mention that the ocean is angry, with its waves dark and violent. The storm is so strong that his mother’s orders him along with Gou to shut down the windows with wood. When they finish, Rin is tired so he flops on the bed, breathing hastily.

He looks at the closed window, hearing the soaring wind trying to get inside the cozy household.

“So much for seeing Sousuke now,” Rin says in the privacy of his room.

With this weather is impossible for any of them to go see the other. It will probably last the whole day and the whole night. Rin worries his lips, feeling them tingle in yearning with the memory of Sousuke close to him. Seeing that he doesn’t have anything to do with his time until dinner, Rin closes his eyes to take a nap, trusting that his mother will wake him up when it’s time to eat.

Rin dreams of a sunny day, white sands, and a blue ocean.

Loud knocks wake him up.

Rin feels disoriented when he looks around his room while his eyes focus again. His mother calls him then.

“Rin! Open the door, please!”

He mumbles a “yes”. His throat is raspy with sleep. Looking for a second at the window, he discovers the storm is still roaring with all its force. Who in their sane mind would risk it to come to their home in the middle of such a strong storm?

In no time Rin goes to the front door, unlocking it to open it, and behind it a tall man stands completely wet even though he is wearing a typical yellow rain jacket with a hat. The man is visibly trembling in cold. Rin has vague memories of the person before him.

“Is your mother home?” The man asks. Rin nods before calling his mother.

The woman arrives quickly. Her eyes widen when she sees the man at the door.

“Come—Come on in, Fujimoto-san!” She says. Rin moves away to let the man enter the house. “Rin, bring some towels for Fujimoto-san. We will be at the kitchen.”

Both adults walk to the kitchen, leaving Rin behind with a head full of questions. Why does his mother know that man? And why does she look so nervous about Fujimoto-san being there? Rin knows he has met the man before, but he can’t put his finger on exactly when or where. Shrugging it off, he goes to the bathroom to take some towels as his mother instructed him to. In the way he finds Gou.

“Who was it?” She asks him. Her voice is a mere whisper.

“I don’t know. Some man in a rain coat,” Rin answers as if nothing, continuing his way to complete his task, but Gou follows him.

“Why is mom talking with him?”

“She sounded like she knows him.”

They arrive at the bathroom, Rin choosing the biggest towels they have for the man.

“But from where?” Gou insists. Rin sighs.

“I don’t know, Gou. We will ask her when he is gone.”

Gou doesn’t seem satisfied with the answer, worrying her lips with her teeth, but Rin can’t do much about it. It indeed is weird for this man to have come to their house in the middle of such a big storm, but their mother trusted him enough to let him in, she even called him by his name, so she knows him well enough. Still, Rin can’t shake the uneasy feeling inside his chest. But he won’t say anything about it in front of Gou who is already anxious by herself.

When Rin walks back to the kitchen Gou doesn’t follow him. He is about to turn around the corner to enter the room when he stops his steps when he hears the man talking.

“I’m sorry, Matsuoka-san.”

“N—No, it’s alright,” she responds.

Rin’s heart palpitates strongly when he recognizes that tone of voice. His mother is trying to not cry.

“T—Thank you for coming to tell me, even with the storm…”

“It’s the least I could do, Matsuoka-san. After all these years…”

Not resisting anymore, Rin enters the kitchen to immediately look at his mother. Both adults seem taken aback of his presence, surprised, and a little alarmed. Rin’s mother’s eyes are red and wet with tears.

“A—Ah, Rin. The towels. Right. Thank you, Rin,” she says as she gets up, walking to him to take the towels from his arms. The man also stands up.

“It won’t be necessary, Matsuoka-san. Thank you for the tea, but I better keep going. I still have other houses to be…”

The woman nods, her teeth biting her lips, and the towels pressed tightly against her chest. His mother accompanies the man to the door, saying farewell. Rin stays at the kitchen, looking at the two cups of steaming hot tea on the table. He sits down where the man was sitting before, and waits for his mother to return. After a few minutes she comes back, stopping in the doorframe when she sees Rin there.

She licks her lips, and then she smiles gently.

“Are you hungry, Rin? How about I make something to eat?”

“Who was that man, mom?” He asks straight to the point, expecting his mother to react surprised or nervous, but he is the one amazed when the woman keeps on smiling.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, how about it? Tonight let’s just have dinner. And how about we all sleep in the same room? It’ll be warmer that way. Call your sister, Rin.”

Rin doesn’t respond with words, he simply nods standing up to do as he was told.

Something happened, Rin knows it, but his mother wants to act as if it didn’t. He doesn’t know why, but his mother has never done this before, so there must be a good reason for it. She said she would explain everything tomorrow, so the only thing he can do is wait for the storm to clear off and the sun to go out.

It isn’t hard to find Gou, she is sitting on her bed looking at the floor with lost eyes. She looks at him when Rin enters the room.

“Is the man gone?” Gou asks, and Rin nods. “I wonder who he was…”

“Mom said she would explain tomorrow.”

Gou frowns, clearly confused for the delay of a clear explanation, nonetheless she doesn’t questions Rin further on the issue.

“Mom wants us to be at the kitchen. And we all are sleeping together tonight,” Rin explains.

The girl nods and stands up, following her brother to the kitchen where their mother is busy cutting some vegetables for whatever she is cooking. Both kids sit down in silence, watching their mother’s back while she works on the food. Gou and Rin look at each other, not knowing what to do or what to say in the middle of this tense atmosphere, so they stay silent. Their mother starts to hum a song neither of them knows.

A while later, the food is done. Shoyu ramen that, even if it’s simple, Rin finds it delicious. It has the perfect balance of soy sauce. This time it has chicken and green onions. Its hotness fills Rin with warmth inside his chest, calming down his pumping heart a bit, lowering his anxiety levels to almost none. His mother looks relaxed, and soon both Rin and Gou feel the same, complaining about how the storm messed up their day’s plans. Gou says she had planned to go to downtown to help a friend choose a new dress, their mother says she had planned to wash the laundry, and Rin shares how he was supposed to meet with Sousuke later.

“This weather sure messed up with our day, didn’t it?” The adult says; her voice is soft. “I hope the storm doesn’t last long. One time, before Rin was born, your father and I had to stay enclosed in this same house for almost a week.”

“A week!” Gou sounds impressed, if her big eyes are proof of anything. “That’s a lot of time!”

“Yes, it is. It was a hard time, I must say, but your father and I were together so in the end we had a good time.”

The woman’s eyes are fixed in her bowl of ramen, but it’s obvious she isn’t paying attention to it but to an image of a faraway memory. She is smiling softly, nostalgia bathing her face.

“But when the sun was out, and the sky was blue, we both were so happy. Not only because the storm was gone, but because we survived it as a couple.”

Rin continues eating his food while listening to his mother. It’s the first time he hears this story. It’s hard to imagine what it feels like to be locked up in their house for a whole week, it sincerely sounds like a nightmare and it probably was, but now their mother looks back at it with a warm feeling. Rin tries to imagine being enclosed like that for a week, fighting against nature itself, and the sole idea sounds horrible. Then again, their mother said their father and her were together, so Rin would be with someone else.

Of course, if Rin could decide with whom, he would choose Sousuke.

This thought brings him a smile on his lips.

“We were just married,” the woman continues, “I think it was only three months or something. And just a few days later, I discovered I was pregnant with Rin.”

At the sound of his name, Rin focuses his eyes on his mother again.

“We were so happy! This was great news! Your father was so excited, Rin. Our first son…”

Both Gou and Rin stare at her, waiting for the story to continue.

“It was even better because it was just after the storm, so we took it as a good omen for the future.”

Their mother keeps talking about their father. How excited he was when Rin finally was born, and how doubly excited he was when Gou came around some months later. All the while he worked hard as a fisherman in the ocean, always providing food and money so their little family could live well.

His mother loves his father, that is easy to see with how her eyes are bright and that smile of hers widens with each story.

By the time she finishes telling all the stories, the food has gone cold and it’s late at night. Rin for a moment gets nervous because he thinks his mother will reprimand him for not studying his English, but that doesn’t happen.

“One night of not studying isn’t that bad,” she says, “Besides, we had a good time, didn’t we?”

“Yeah!” Gou yells, cheerful like a bird in spring.

Rin smirks, the electric atmosphere sticking to him. Not seeing Sousuke for the day was a bum, but spending time with his family is always good. Plus, with all these stories of his father, Rin feels his anger towards him lower, and he is happy about it.

“Let’s go to sleep now, kids,” his mother announced, “Rin, go grab the futon from your room and take it to mine.”

“Yes, mom!”

The futon is most of the time inside of Rin’s bedroom because Sousuke spends a lot of nights in there. Though they don’t really use it as they sleep together on the bed – but his mother doesn’t have to know that. Rin takes the futon and the cover to his parents’ room, where Gou already is dressed in her sleeping clothes and her hair down, sitting on the bed. The girl stares at Rin while the boy places the futon on the floor, accommodating it how he sees fit.

“Did you know all those stories, brother?” Gou asks him once he is settled, “About dad.”

“No, I didn’t,” he answers, sitting down on the futon.

“It sounded really nice, right? All what mom and dad lived through together.”

“Yeah, it does.”

And it’s the truth. Rin knows his parents love each other deeply. They wouldn’t have stayed together for so long otherwise.

When Gou is about to say something, their mother enters the room, dressed in her sleeping clothes too.

“Isn’t this nice?” She says when she sees her children in the room, “It’ll be like a party. Though I guess you won’t tell me who yours crushes are, right?...”

“Mom! Ew!” Gou wrinkles her nose, evidently disgusted at the prospect of a crush.

Rin laughs at her, finding it funny how aberrant she is of the idea. Their mother laughs too.

“What about you, Rin?” The woman asks as she sits down on the other side of the bed. “Do you have a crush on someone?”

“No, I don’t,” he replies, his chest poofing with pride.

“He is always busy with Sousuke-kun, anyway! The only girls he knows are the one from school, and he never spends time with them,” Gou says.

“I just like being with Sousuke better, you don’t have to be annoying about it, Gou!” Rin pouts at her.

“Calm down, Rin, no need to cry!” Gou claims back.

“I’m not crying!”

“Children!” Their mother yells.

They silence up immediately. “Let’s just go to sleep, alright?” The woman suggests, “It’s been a long day and we must rest so we can have a wonderful day tomorrow.”

“Yes, mom,” both kids reply in unison.

Rin lies down on the futon when his mother turns off the lamp on the side table.

With the silence of the night, Rin hears the angry storm still roaring, like a monster looking for vengeance against someone who dared harm them. If he was younger, perhaps he would have been scared of the thunders with how loud they are, but Rin isn’t a child anymore so he isn’t afraid of some silly storm trying to sound menacing. Much less when he is safe at home with his family.

 

 

He is suddenly awakened by being brusquely shaken by a small hand, opening his eyes but closing them immediately when the sleep is too much for him. He still moves a little, covering his face with an arm.

“Brother,” it’s Gou who is calling him in a whisper, still shaking him, “Brother, wake up.”

“I’m awake,” he replies, clearing his throat to make it work, “What is it?”

It’s weird for Gou to wake him up like this, so maybe something happened.

“I think—I think…” Gou’s voice trembles a little, and this makes Rin look at her immediately. Her eyes are wide and wet, and her cheeks and nose sport a soft pink color. She looks scared, and this activates Rin’s senses, sitting.

The room is still dark, so the sunrise has yet to come, but from the silence inside the room, Rin guesses the storm has finally ended.

“What’s wrong, Gou?” He asks, looking around to discover that they are alone in the room, “Where is mom?”

At the mention of their mother, Gou’s lips visibly tremble.

“At the kitchen,” she murmurs, her voice is so low Rin barely hears it, “She is—I think she is—“

Gou’s hands tremble and Rin holds them in hopes of stopping them but it’s futile.

“What is it, Gou? Calm down,” Rin insists, lowering his voice. He has a feeling that, somehow, this conversation must be kept in secret.

The girl closes her eyes, fat tears falling from her red eyelashes. She stands up, taking Rin by a wrist to pull him up and walk to the kitchen. All of this is done in dead silence. Rin is about to ask Gou what is going on for a third time, but his words are interrupted by a sob coming from the kitchen.

They arrive to the kitchen’s doorframe, not entering the room, and both kids rest their backs against the wall.

Sobs, laments, and whimpers are heard from the kitchen. And all of them are from their mother.

Their mother is heavily crying in the kitchen.

Rin dares to peek a little by the corner of the doorframe, biting his lips to suppress a gasp.

His mother is sitting at the table, her face hidden between her arms that are resting on the table, her whole body is trembling, and it’s easy to hear her wail even if it’s muffled by the fabric of her sleeping gown. Her red hair is a mess, falling down her shoulders and over the table.

Rin goes back to his hiding spot, with his heart pumping rapidly against his chest, hurting him like a hammer. Cold sweat begins to trail down his temples. Why is their mother crying in the middle of the night? What happened that made her like this? She was smiling just fine before sleeping, she looked so happy telling them stories from their past. What could have happened that—

A flash of yellow comes back from the back of his head, as if the storm hasn’t ended inside his mind.

The man in yellow rain coat.

Their mother started to act weirdly as soon as the man appeared at their door. She looked nervous at first, but then she smiled and told them stories of their dad.

He stops breathing.

Rin slowly looks at Gou, who is still trembling next to him, with her eyes closed, wet trails of tears falling down her reddened cheeks. Rin can’t do anything about it when tears of his own start to roll down.

His whole body is trembling, breathing burns his lungs, and his legs feel weak and like they can’t support his weight. Nonetheless, he balls up his fists, gulping hard the hot coal in his throat, and enters the kitchen.

“Mom!” Rin calls her.

The woman immediately looks his way. Her eyes are swollen and red, and the tears won’t stop falling from them. Her clear skin is reddened from crying. But above all, she looks surprised, taken back, and scared.

“R—Rin,” she can barely talk, with her voice broken and low, “What—What are you doing here? You should be sleeping.”

Her eyes widen when she sees Gou slowly peeking her head from the doorframe. “Gou, you too?”

“Mom…” Gou’s voice is a mere whisper, trying to hold back her sobs, taking slow steps inside the kitchen, “Mom… when is dad coming back?”

Rin is surprised at how controlled Gou seems to be, when he feels like a mess right now. Anger, confusion, and sadness scratching his insides without any kind of mercy like a feral beast.

It doesn’t take much for their mother to close her eyes, letting the tears fall free, damping her lap.

“I—I’m sorry, Gou, Rin,” she says, her voice wrecked, “I was—I was going to tell you to—tomorrow when I was more calm.” The woman slowly shakes her head, looking down, before continue speaking, “I—I’m sorry I’m not strong enough for you, kids.”

The woman covers her face with both hands, weeping and sobbing loudly.

In a matter of seconds Gou is holding her mother, both of them crying their souls out, while Rin stays still on his place, not daring to move a muscle as he feels the hot tears sliding down his face. His mother then extends an arm towards him, a silent invitation to join her and Gou that Rin takes without any doubt, falling to his knees and bawling into her lap.

The three of them cry until their eyes get dry, and even then they don’t let go of each other, wanting to stay together because the world outside is too cold for them.

Their mother explains to them that their father’s boat went missing since one week ago, a week later than when he was supposed to have arrived at port, but didn’t declared him dead until just now because hope is the last thing that dies. Last night’s storm is probably what took the ship down and, a week later, it finally reached the coast.

Rin remembers his mother’s words that morning, about the sky being dark and gloom, and he realizes his mother probably already knew what had happened even before that man of yellow rain coat – their father’s supervisor, that is why he looked familiar to Rin – got to their house.

There aren’t any survivors. The whole crew of thirty people died.

The sun rises and the Matsuoka family is still lying on the bed, with the mother in the middle of her two children, softly patting their heads full of red and humming a song neither of them knows. Gou has an arm over her mother’s middle, while Rin is huddled against the bigger body. They aren’t crying anymore, but the three of them are exhausted after a sleepless night full of destructive emotions.

After what felt like an eternity, a knock on the front door surprises them. They ignore it for a moment, but when the knocking persists, the mother tells Rin to go open because she is still wearing her sleeping gown.

Rin simply obeys, too tired to try to fight it, exiting the room but taking a detour to the bathroom to check his face. He looks like a complete mess. The boy wets his hair, trying to comb it with his fingers; he also washes his face quickly. When he deems himself at least a little presentable, he makes his way to the front door, opening it.

“Rin!” It’s Sousuke in front of him, he is smiling but that beam disappears as soon as he sees Rin’s face. “Rin, what happened? Did you cry?”

Sousuke now looks worried, his teal eyes wandering through Rin’s face looking for clues of what is troubling his best friend but when he can’t find anything, he questions again.

“Where is your mom?”

Rin doesn’t have a voice to reply. His voice got broken from all the crying he did last night, and Rin suspects he won’t recuperate it for a long while, not because it isn’t fixable, but because Rin doesn’t find the strength in him to speak.

And yet, the only thing he can think of right now is saying one thing.

“Sousuke…”

A pitiful, wrecked, and ruined call that burns like magma inside of him, scorching his heart and spirit. Tears that he thought dry spill again, closing his eyes when his sight goes blurry.

As soon as his name leaves Rin’s lips, Sousuke embraces the boy close to him in a tight hug that Rin immediately gives back, passing his arms around Sousuke’s middle strongly. Rin cries again, wailing and sobbing so loudly that his mother runs to the door, but stops when she sees the scene before her.

Some minutes later, both boys are on Rin’s bed, huddled together impossibly close because Rin still has his arms circling Sousuke’s middle, his face hidden on Sousuke’s neck. He isn’t crying anymore, his last remaining energies finally drained, but he doesn’t feel like opening his eyes. It shouldn’t matter, anyway, the windows are still shut down with wood so the room is submerged in darkness.

Sousuke, by his part, hasn’t said anything since he asked for Rin’s mom, so he doesn’t know what is going. Still, he accepted Rin’s tears without any comment, without any doubt, hugging him harder when Rin’s sobs got deeper.

And now, now that the tears finally stopped, Sousuke plays with Rin’s hair gently, twisting the tips with his fingers.

“My dad died,” Rin says. His voice is husky and it hurts. Sousuke hums. “His ship was wrecked by a storm.” Sousuke hums again.

“I’m sorry, Rin,” he says, softly.

Rin simply nods because he doesn’t know what to answer to that. “I’m here for you,” Sousuke continues. Rin nods again.

“I know,” he answers.

He feels a big hand caressing his cheek, making him look up. Sousuke isn’t smiling, but Rin knows it’s because Sousuke doesn’t think it’s appropriate, therefore his lips are a straight line, even if his eyes reflect compassion and empathy. Rin smiles despite himself, actually feeling happy for having Sousuke with him, and gives his friend a quick kiss. Sousuke’s eyes widen immediately, surprised at the sudden gesture, and perhaps a little confused because, being honest, kissing right now is weird.

“Thank you, Sousuke,” Rin decides to explain, burrowing his face on Sousuke’s neck again, “For being here.”

Sousuke doesn’t say anything, his only reply a soft hum.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd.

The next few weeks are hard, obviously, with Rin’s mother having to prepare and read tons and tons of paperwork for her deceased husband – “legal circus,” his mother calls it – so she has been busy and distracted by the time being. Gou and Rin are the ones taking care of the house now, cooking and cleaning.

Rin thinks the hardest part to accept is the fact that his plans for the future now are even more uncertain than ever.

He once suggested his mother to stop going to school to start working to help in the house, but the woman completely rejected it, saying that they will think of a way to prevent that from happening. She seems to have a plan, and that somewhat calms Rin down but it doesn’t stop him from feeling like he should be doing more.

But, even if everything is hard, even if Rin feels like life is being too cold with him, he finds himself smiling every time he sees Sousuke at his door.

Every day his best friend comes for him in the morning to go to school, and when it ends Sousuke accompanies Rin to his house’s door. Not to mention that now Sousuke kisses him more often, at any hidden opportunity. At first it kind of surprised Rin, but he slowly accepted the new development with open arms.

 

 

It has been three months since his father died.

It still hurts, but Rin has learnt that everything heals with time, and speaking with honesty he is excited about the future.

His mother has accepted a few jobs to gain some extra money – Rin was surprised when she told them she had money saved from their father’s income – but it’s difficult to maintain a secure job when you are a widow with two kids. Rin hadn’t noticed before but now he sees how conservative their city is, mainly when he accompanies his mother to the market to help her. He sees people whispering as they walk past them, some of them even daring to point at his mother. It makes Rin angry.

The whole city started to act differently towards the Matsuoka woman. Men started to court her, and women started to feel pity for her; later on, men started to cuss her when she rejected them, and women started to gossip about her when she didn’t say thanks on her knees.

Only the Yamazaki family continues to treat the Matsuoka family as always.

Autumn arrived since a few weeks ago, and the cool air is a constant reminder of this even though they are close to the beach. 

Rin is walking towards his home, Sousuke accompanying him as usual. They are in silence, something that Rin has learnt to accept too – learning that silence is also a good way to be with someone –, just stealing brief gazes between them with little smiles.

They arrive to Rin’s house, where he unlocks the door to later look at Sousuke.

“Wanna come in?” Rin asks him.

“No, I promised mom I would clean my room today,” Sousuke replies, giving a tired sigh at the end.

“That’s good, because last time I went there it was a major mess,” Rin teases with a smirk.

“Oh, shut up.”

They stare at each other for a moment instead of Sousuke saying goodbye, lingering on his place without moving, and Rin knows exactly why, his suspicions being confirmed when he sees Sousuke licking his lips. Rin nods rapidly, and with that Sousuke looks around them quickly. No one is close by, Rin concludes, as Sousuke takes a step further and kisses him. It’s a quick peck that leaves Rin wanting more, but sadly that can’t happen when they are in the middle of an open space. He makes the mental note of kissing Sousuke more tomorrow.

“See you tomorrow, Rin,” Sousuke says as he lifts his fist.

“See you, Sousuke,” Rin replies back, bumping his own fist with Sousuke’s.

Sousuke walks backwards with a smile, his teal eyes never leaving the crimson ones, until he turns around and runs down the street. Rin sighs, content, before entering his house.

“I’m home!” He announces, but only silence receives him. How weird. He knows Gou went to one of her friend’s home, but his mother should be here by now. “Mom?” He calls her.

Rin slowly walks to the kitchen, and peeks his eyes on the doorframe when he gets there, finding his mother sitting there at the table, resting her forehead on both of her hands as if her head hurts immensely. It wouldn’t be surprising if that’s the case, Rin thinks, seeing the table full of paperwork and a pen in his mother’s hand.

The boy has noticed how this whole thing has affected the woman. She isn’t as joyful as she used to be – although she never stops smiling – and she is evidently more stressed. Multiple times Rin has heard her in the middle of the night in the kitchen, preparing tea for one person because she can’t sleep. It’s worrisome, and Rin would wish to be able to support his beloved mother more, but she insists on Rin continuing school.

Rin sighs again, entering the kitchen with a smile.

“I’m home, mom!” He repeats. This time his mother looks at him, smiling at him in a second.

“Rin! I didn’t hear you, sorry. I’ve been a little busy…” she fans her hand towards all the sheets of paper over the table.

“It’s alright,” he replies, shrugging it off.

“Let me take all of this away and I’ll prepare something for you to eat, Rin.”

The woman stands up, but Rin stops her.

“No, no!” He says, “I can do it. I’ll just leave my bag in my room and I’ll be back.”

Without waiting for a response, Rin runs to his room, leaving his backpack on his bed.

He can’t do much for his mother outside their home, but inside of it he will try his best to help her. Soon enough, he is at the kitchen again, cutting some vegetables while the woman continues working on the paper work. She sometimes mumbles something only for herself, but Rin can’t help it when his curiosity peaks every time she does it.

When Rin puts the cut ingredients in a bowl, the woman puts away the paperwork inside a folder, saying something about she has finished. After that, she continues to help Rin cook their food. She asks Rin about his day, and the boy tells her what he did at school and with Sousuke, and how Sousuke couldn’t stay because his room is a mess and he has to clean it. His mother laughs at that, her eyes gentle and soft.

They sit down at the table to enjoy their food. Rin sees how different his cut vegetables look from his mother’s. His are uneven, sometimes too big and sometimes too small with rough edges, unlike his mother’s that are almost always the same size. It’s a little embarrassing, Rin has to admit, mainly when he remembers how good at cooking Sousuke is.

Their classmates think it’s a little weird for Sousuke to know how to cook, being a man and all, but what they don’t know is that Sousuke’s mother works along with her husband, so it falls on Sousuke’s shoulders to cook for the whole family. Rin thinks that’s good, because he is being helpful in the house, unlike Rin who doesn’t even know how to cut a damn carrot without messing it up. The thought is enough to make him frown. It doesn’t go unnoticed by his mother, who starts speaking.

“Is something wrong, Rin?”

“No, nothing,” he says, shaking his head, “It’s just that I think I should be able to cook.”

His mother smiles, understanding, before talking, “It’s normal you don’t, Rin. You didn’t have a reason to do it because I was here full-time. I really appreciate what you and Gou are doing. You both are trying your best, aren’t you?”

Rin feels his cheeks turn hot with the compliment, biting his lips and looking away because it’s embarrassing to see his mother in the eye. The woman giggles at him.

“Don’t worry, Rin,” she says, “The future for us is bright, even if it looks difficult right now.”

The boy looks at his mother again, his head full of questions, so he starts with the first one.

“Do you have a plan for us?”

The woman doesn’t answer at first, her crimson eyes lost in the depths of her dish, probably trying to make sense of the answer she is going to give.

“Yes, Rin. I have,” she finally answers, “It’s going to be difficult, for all us, but it’s definitive.”

Her eyes look at Rin, and the red in them is full of determination, alive with hope and decision. It’s so intense it kind of reminds Rin of Sousuke’s eyes whenever he is talking about the future.

“What is that plan?” He asks next.

His mother gulps. She never breaks eye contact, but Rin still perceives how her hand with the chopsticks is slightly trembling. Maybe she is afraid after all.

“We are moving.”

The words don’t make sense inside of Rin’s head when he hears them, having to mumble them so they can finally settle in his mind. In a second, his heart starts to pump blood wildly, so hard that his heartbeat is everything Rin hears in his ears. His hand let the chopsticks fall from his grip, hitting the table with an acute sound.

“M—Moving?” Rin questions once his voice is found again in the depths of his clogged throat. His mother nods.

“To New York City, with my sister.”

“W—We can’t move! Gou and I have school here!”

“We are leaving when the school year ends.”

To Rin’s frustration, his mother sounds impressively tranquil about it, as if this decision isn’t life changing or as if it doesn’t affect Rin at all.

“Rin, I know it looks drastic, but—“

“I don’t wanna move!”

“Rin!”

The woman slams her hand on the table, making Rin tremble and shut up, his eyes get big in surprise when he sees his mother frowning.

“We are moving and that’s final!” She yells, “We can’t continue living here!”

Rin still doesn’t respond, looking attentively to the woman before him, his lips are parted, and his knees are trembling. Clear tears start to roll down from his mother’s eyes. Rin is almost sure those tears taste like anger and frustration.

“It’s impossible to live here anymore!” She continues, passing her hand through her already messed up hair, “No one wants to hire me, Rin. No one wants an unmarried widow working for them. And the whole city hates me for some reason.”

She covers her eyes with a hand, breathing deeply.

“We—We simply can’t live here, Rin. Not if we want to survive. The money is slowly disappearing.”

Rin looks down to his bowl of food that is probably cold and tastes bad by now.

“I know it’s hard, Rin. I really do. I’d wish we didn’t have to do this.” The woman cleans her tears with a napkin. Her eyes look red. “But we have to, Rin. I’m sorry.”

This time the boy nods, still not looking at his mother.

He understands why his mother decided this. And it’s clear it wasn’t an easy decision for her. He understands this is the only solution for them right now. This city, as his mother said, doesn’t allow people to be different, and it’s making everything more complicated for them. New York City could be their pass for a better life – a bright future, his mom said – because that place is bigger than this small city, it’s full of different people with thousands of different backgrounds. If there is a place where his family can progress, it’s there.

Yes, he understands all of this, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

“I’m going to ask of you something extremely important, Rin,” his mother says, softly and calmly, her hand reaching for Rin’s. “You have to stay strong, Rin; for me, for Gou, for you, and for our family. We all have to be strong for each other.”

Her voice travels all the way to his heart, gripping it with a force that Rin translates as pain.

“I know it isn’t fair,” she continues, shaking her head slowly with her eyes closed, “What is happening to us, it isn’t fair, but I believe life doesn’t attack us with what we can’t endure and resist.”

Rin nods again.

“I’m not hungry anymore,” he whispers, looking down to his lap.

With his words, his mother nods too as she sighs. “Alright, Rin. You can go now.”

Standing up, he goes to his room and grabs his backpack, quickly walking to the front door.

“I’m going to Sousuke’s.”

His mother doesn’t try to stop him when he gets outside their home, running down the street to where he knows his friend will be.

He doesn’t blame his mother for this, shit, he doesn’t even blame his father for this. He doesn’t blame anyone because he understands that these things happen to people. Every day, every hour, and every minute, decisions are made based on what happens in life, and no one can’t do anything against it, because that is how life simply is.

But it still hurts. It hurts Rin deeply because he can’t blame anyone for this so he can’t direct his anger on someone else.

In just two months his life will change completely, and he doesn’t like it one bit, but it doesn’t matter how much he cries, or how angry he is, it won’t stop. Because life simply doesn’t wait for people.

Rin arrives to Sousuke’s house, knocking on the door, and waiting for a response. It’s Sousuke’s mother who is behind the door, smiling widely when she sees the boy.

“Rin-kun! Hello!”

“Hello, Yamazaki-san. Is Sousuke home?” He asks, tightening his fists on the backpack straps.

“Yes, of course, come on in. He is in his bedroom.”

He enters the house when the woman gives him permission, making his way through the house he knows all too well. Rin finds Sousuke’s door closed, so he knocks.

“It’s open!” Sousuke’s voice yells from inside.

Opening the door, Rin steps inside the room, being welcomed by a pair of surprised teal eyes.

“Rin? What are you doing here?” Sousuke asks.

Sousuke is sitting on the floor, surrounded by a mess of books, notebooks, and clothes. Rin remembers Sousuke told him he was going to clean his room.

“Am I interrupting?” Rin asks back, his lips twisting in a toothy grin.

The sitting boy sighs, tiredly, while closing his eyes. “This cleaning has been a pain in the ass. But what are you doing here?”

Rin clicks his tongue, walking to where Sousuke is, having to tip toe through the chaos to not step on anything.

“I just thought we could do our homework together,” he says as he sits down next to his friend, “But I guess you are too busy with this.”

“Yeah, I can’t start my homework with this mess now. I thought it would be fast, but…”

“That’s because you are doing it wrong.” Rin takes off his backpack, throwing it on the futon so it doesn’t get in the way. “First you have to separate your stuff into smaller groups.”

Getting on his four, Rin picks up some books, putting them together in a little stack next to them. “Like that, it’ll be easier to choose what to throw away in the garbage.”

Sousuke hums and nods, following Rin’s instruction with the rest of the stuff. They work in silence, putting together and stacking the mess in the corresponding groups that Rin just made up. The room already looks more organized when they finish the first step, but Rin insists that they must continue with deciding what to throw away. He asks Sousuke for each thing – “Is this going to the trash?” – but Rin doesn’t seem to find a definite pattern on what stuff Sousuke wants to keep. For example, Sousuke accepts to throw away old homework, but he won’t accept to dump a rock that he took from only-heavens-knows-where. In fact, Rin is starting to think Sousuke may be kind of a hoarder for senseless tiny things, because he also refuses to get rid of a dried leaf and a Coke bottle cap.

When they finally finish, the room looks spotless, wider even, and Rin feels a little better seeing the results of their hard work.

“Alright!” He says with his hands well placed on his waist, “We can do the homework now.”

“I’m tired,” Sousuke replies, letting himself fall on the futon with a mute sound, “Let’s rest a little.”

“Man, why are you so lazy?” Rin gets close to the futon, pushing Sousuke with his knee to make him move a little.

“I’m not lazy, I’m just tired.” Sousuke insists.

“Yeah, right! Are you always tired too?”

He doesn’t get an answer, but his wrist is pulled down by Sousuke suddenly, forcing him into the futon to fall victim of Sousuke picking his ribs and sides. Rin immediately starts to laugh and to try to defend himself, also poking Sousuke’s middle, but Rin has always been weaker in this game in particular, being too sensitive for his own good unlike his friend, who endures the poking easily by mere determination of winning.

Sousuke stops his attack when Rin starts to wheeze from laughing too much, with little tears threatening to fall from the corners of his eyes, and lets him rest. The boy pants loudly, a smile adorns his lips and his eyes are closed. Rin opens his eyes, focusing his sight on the roof, but when he realizes Sousuke is too silent he turns his face to see him. His friend is there, lying on his side, looking at him with interested attention and curiosity. Rin’s hand is touched by Sousuke’s, slowly and gentle, asking for permission for something more than Rin gladly grants when he interlaces their fingers.

Life is unfair, that isn’t anything new. Rin already knows that, way before he even knew the concept of life. Things happen to people and they can’t do anything about it because they don’t have the power to change destiny.

But, if Rin could, if Rin could wish for something in his life, he would wish to never ever be away from Sousuke.

“I’m moving away,” Rin whispers to his friend. Sousuke’s eyes widen, his smile disappearing in a second, and Rin can see how the teal eyes are trying to find the joke on his face. Sadly, this isn’t a joke.

“Moving?” Sousuke asks when he sees Rin isn’t laughing.

“To New York City. It’s final. My mom just told me,” he explains, “She says it’s for the best.”

To that, Sousuke doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t dare to break eye contact with the other boy. Rin sees how Sousuke’s Adam’s apple bumps a little when he gulps.

“New York City,” Sousuke says in the end. Rin nods.

“I have an aunt over there.”

“New York is really far away from here.”

“Yes, it is.”

They fall in silence, none of them daring to speak what is in their mind, maybe because they are afraid of angering destiny with selfish wishes. But then, when Rin is starting to think he broke Sousuke or something, his friend smiles. A gentle smile that every single time takes Rin’s breath away, that every single time makes his heart pump wildly inside his chest, roaring loudly like a volcano in eruption and warming up his insides.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sousuke says, still smiling, “If you are here, or in New York City, it doesn’t matter. Wherever you are, I’ll go for you.”

Rin feels his eyes burn, watering and making his sight blurry all of the sudden, so he closes his eyes, gulping down a hiccup in his throat.

“Don’t cry, Rin.” He hears Sousuke saying, as always.

“I’m not crying!” Rin tries to defend himself, although he knows is pretty much useless when the tears are already falling down his cheeks.

“This is a new opportunity, isn’t it? It’s exciting, right?” Sousuke continues talking. “A new state, a new city. I’ve heard New York City is huge.”

Rin cleans his tears, glad that Sousuke is making everything easier already with just his simple words. “Yeah, good thing you aren’t coming, or you would get lost,” he jokes.

“Oh, shut up! I get lost once and now you won’t leave it alone!”

“Just ‘once’? It’s a miracle you don’t get lost in your house!”

Sousuke attacks Rin with more pokes on his sides instead of replying with a comment, successfully shutting Rin up. Once again, Rin ends up breathing heavily and defeated, this time lying on his stomach over the futon while Sousuke is looking at him, sitting in lotus, smiling with childish pride for winning.

“Hey, Sousuke…” Rin turns around to have his back on the futon. His friend hums as an answer to his call, “… will you miss me?”

Sousuke moves his hand towards Rin’s red hair, tucking a lock behind his ear. His long fingers linger along the line of his jaw, sending shudders down Rin’s spine. Sousuke licks his lips, and Rin nods.

As usual, the kiss is soft, lingering and long now that they are alone in the safety of Sousuke’s room with the door closed. As usual, it fills Rin’s stomach with a warm sensation, expanding through his body in slow waves like the ocean in a tranquil day. As usual, Rin never wants this to end because he wants to stay in this blissful state forever.

However, it ends, slowly and lazily, their lips separating gently as Sousuke pulls away. Rin opens his eyes to find Sousuke already looking at him, and he feels embarrassment prickling quickly underneath his skin.

“What are you looking at?” He asks, sounding angrier than he intended to, but Sousuke doesn’t seem to be fazed.

“You,” Sousuke answers simply.

His whole body gets hot, bashfulness covering him like a warm blanket in the middle of a hot summer.

Before Rin can say anything else, Sousuke leans in for another kiss, sealing his lips from talking further but the redhead doesn’t complain at all. He is surprised, though, when a hand goes under him, an arm circling his middle to pull him closer to Sousuke, putting their chests together. Like this Rin is able to feel Sousuke’s heart beating strongly against his chest, which calms him down in an odd way, knowing that Sousuke is feeling the same way as him.

Sousuke lets go of his hand in order to caress his side, starting from his waist to end on his back. Rin tightens his fists on Sousuke’s shirt. This feeling is new, Rin discovers, it’s different from what it usually feels like to kiss Sousuke. It isn’t bad, of course, but Rin has the sensation of falling deeper into something that he doesn’t know how to call or name.

Rin hums into the kiss when Sousuke burrows his fingers in the red hair. Sousuke breaks the kiss after that, opening his eyes and releasing Rin from the strong grip of his arm, looking away while his face turns a shade of red.

“Sorry,” he whispers, turning away to lie on his stomach, hiding his face on the cover. Rin is confused for a second, until he remembers what happened last time they did this and Sousuke apologized too.

Rin snorts, pushing Sousuke a little with his hand. “Just a kiss and you get like this?”

“Shut up, Rin! I can’t help it.”

Those words give Rin a weird sensation of pride, making him smile and laugh harder while Sousuke stays silent, sulking in embarrassment.

They make their homework eventually – when Sousuke’s body returns to his normal state –, eating dinner when finished. With that, Rin says his farewells to the Yamazaki family.

When he arrives to his home, his mother tells Gou the news about the moving. When he arrives to his home, his mother and him calm down Gou until she stops crying. When he arrives home, he hugs his mother.

 

 

 

Two months are, hypothetically, a long time.

Eight weeks. Sixty days. One thousand four hundred forty hours.

And yet, Rin could swear he blinked for just a second when the two months already passed.

With the cold winter on its maximum splendor, with snow falling from the sky, and with the wind stealing the warmth from everyone, the school announces the end of classes.

Rin had thought that by now he would be used to the idea of moving, but with each day that ends he finds himself more nervous and anxious about it; the whole Matsuoka family is. His mother has been extra busy nowadays, preparing everything for the eventual moving day, deciding what they will take with them and what they will have to leave behind forever. It’s difficult, to say the least, because none of them can afford to take much for their new lives in the unknown city of New York. Rin would love to take with him his whole collection of magazines but he is aware that it’s impossible, mainly when his mother asked him to pack only and exclusively his essential stuff.

But what is essential?

“Hey, Rin.”

Rin looks at his friend, who is sitting next to him on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by Rin’s stuff. There are already two groups of things, one rather bigger than the other one that has just a few objects. The small stack is what Rin is willing to take with him, including an old slingshot that he hasn’t used in over a decade, some notebooks, and a baseball.

“What?” Rin asks, seeing that Sousuke is holding a soccer ball.

“Will you take this?”

The boy shakes his head. “No, it takes too much space.”

“Alright.”

Sousuke puts the ball in the bigger stack of things that Rin won’t take.

“You can keep it, Sousuke,” he offers. His friend looks at him, smiling.

“Yeah, thanks.”

The red eyes look to Gou’s side of the bedroom. She already decided what to take and what to leave, so there are some boxes next to her bed. The girl made the same process than him, bringing one of her friends to help her decide and occasionally giving her stuff that it’s too precious to throw away in the trash.

“I didn’t know you had all this stuff,” Sousuke comments, picking up an old coloring book. “Your room is always so organized and clean I almost thought you didn’t keep anything.”

“Unlike you, I’m far cleaner,” Rin teases his friend.

“Whatever,” Sousuke mumbles, making Rin laugh.

“By the way, I was thinking…” Rin commences, also picking up another object to decide over it. “We should write each other letters, when I’m in New York, I mean.”

Red meets teal when Rin looks at Sousuke, whom is already gazing at him. Sometimes Rin feels like Sousuke is always watching him, but instead of making him uncomfortable – as it should be, he guesses – he finds it nice. It gives him a sensation of contentment, of happiness, and of joy, to know that Sousuke is looking at him, to know that Sousuke’s attention is on him instead of something – or someone – else.

“What do you say?” He asks to end his idea.

“Okay,” Sousuke responds in English, grinning.

Rin lifts up his fists, Sousuke following him almost immediately, bumping their fists to make the agreement official.

“Will you stay over tonight?” Rin questions, directing his eyes to the pile of stuff he is going to take.

“Do you want me to?” Sousuke replies with a question himself. A question that makes Rin gulp nervously.

Lately Sousuke has been teasing him too much about his wants and wishes, to the point of making him embarrassingly confess that he enjoys holding Sousuke’s hand – even though Rin knows Sousuke probably already fucking knew from the beginning –.

“Did you know that only idiots answer questions with another question?” Rin retorts, not willing to lose this duel of persistence.

“Do you realize you just answered my question with a question?”

Rin grabs the first thing he sees – a tiny green toy soldier – and throws it at Sousuke. The other boy laughs, taking Rin’s fit as a definitive winning.

“Yeah, I’ll stay,” Sousuke finally responds to the first question, “If your mom allows it. I’m surprised she hasn’t had enough of me eating her food.”

“Are you kidding? She loves you! You are practically her third unofficial son.”

“Would that make me your brother?”

“Ew, no! Who the fuck kisses their own brother?”

“That would make you so weird.”

“Let me remind you, Sousuke, that you are the one who pops a boner whenever we kiss too much. That would make you weirder.”

Just seconds after he says this, Rin is attacked with a pillow from behind, Sousuke having picked it up from the bed to throw it at him. Rin laughs, taking the pillow and throwing it back at Sousuke who gets hit in the face. Rin is expecting an attack but it never comes, not with Sousuke sitting down and pouting, covering half his face with the pillow that he is hugging.

“It’s your fault, anyway…” the boy mumbles.

“Eh? My fault? It’s not like I tell your dick what to do.”

“No, but—“ Sousuke’s words die when he seems to have second thoughts about what he is to say, “Forget it.”

The redhead is a lot of things. He is passionate, he is competitive, and he is curious. He loves to discover stuff, to begin new adventures, and to know everything there is to know.

So, no, Rin won’t forget this easily.

“Oi, don’t just let it—“

The door is suddenly opened, revealing a young girl of red hair. It’s Gou, who is smiling.

“Dinner is ready!” She announces, “Hurry up because I’m starving.”

“Yeah, we are coming,” Rin says, standing up. Sousuke does the same after him.

The Matsuoka family, plus Sousuke, eat dinner peacefully; their mother talking about their new home in New York City. Her mother’s sister – Rin and Gou’s aunt – is single, so she lives alone and has enough space in her home to receive them, although a little tight. Either way, Rin will have the benefit of a room all for himself, while Gou and their mother share another one. Something about “little men need their private space,” to which of course Gou complains saying that she also needs her private space.

Rin is honestly excited about the moving, he has big expectations of what is going to happen, but a dark worm still lurks inside his chest with insecurity and uncertainty, and Rin suspects it’s because of the boy sitting next to him.

He will miss Sousuke, deeply, that is why he suggested the letters, in hopes of never breaking contact with his best friend. Not until Sousuke goes looking for him, like the boy himself promised the day Rin revealed the plan to him.

Tonight it’s Rin’s turn to wash the dishes, so Sousuke helps him with that before going to the boy’s bedroom. Rin dictates that they will have to finish establishing what stuff he will take to New York once they wake up in the morning, before Sousuke has to go back to his own home. Both boys prepare to sleep and, as usual, lie down on Rin’s bed even if Gou’s bed is free.

They are so used to contact by now that Rin doesn’t even think it when he huddles next to his friend, looking for his warmth with the excuse of being a cold night of winter. If Sousuke doesn’t believe it, he doesn’t say anything, and Rin appreciates that.

To think that soon Rin won’t be able to do this anymore is sad in the least. The idea of sleeping miles and miles away from his best friend is so weird for him now that he is a little afraid of getting insomnia in his new home. The thought of lonely nights makes his heart cringe, and his lips tingle with yearning, so, looking into Sousuke’s eyes, Rin speaks.

“Kiss me,” he says, almost like an order that Sousuke is quick to obey, linking their lips after licking his own.

His heart is soon to forget the bitter taste of loneliness, accelerating its rhythm when he feels Sousuke’s hands traveling to his back to pull him closer. Rin passes his arms around Sousuke’s middle to get even closer to him, despite him knowing it’s practically impossible.

One of Sousuke’s hands trails his back all the way to his hair, sending tremors through it like electricity, tangling his fingers in Rin’s locks.

Rin, expectedly, hums because Sousuke’s hands on him feel good. How they caress slowly his back and how his fingers play with his hair, everything makes his whole body tremble, it makes something inside of him spark brightly, and he – sincerely – can’t have enough of it.

All too soon, Sousuke breaks the kiss, and Rin already knows what is going to happen next.

“So—“

But this time, Rin doesn’t let him say it, gripping Sousuke harder by the middle to prevent him to get away.

Sousuke opens his eyes wide with Rin’s unexpected new attitude. They stare at each other for a moment, and suddenly Rin doesn’t know what to do next.

Rin is a lot of things. He is curious, he is competitive, but mainly, he is passionate.

He shakes his head fast, in hopes of Sousuke understanding that he doesn’t want him to get away just yet, and goes beyond that when Rin kisses him again.

Sousuke freezes for just a second before his hands go back to where they practically belong on Rin’s body.

Suddenly Rin doesn’t feel the cruel cold of the winter anymore, all he feels is Sousuke and his warmth, bathing him like a sun that Rin doesn’t mind getting burn with. It all takes an unreal turn when Sousuke moves one of his legs between Rin’s, pulling him closer with a hand on the small of his back. Like this, Rin can feel Sousuke’s lower body, hot and hard against him under the pajamas Rin lent him. Sousuke breaks the kiss again, but he doesn’t go away this time, he hides his face on Rin’s neck.

Sousuke is breathing heavily, hitting Rin’s neck’s sensitive skin with each exhale.

“R—Rin…”

The boy trembles when he hears Sousuke’s voice. It’s different than usual. This isn’t Sousuke’s voice when he is playing soccer. This isn’t Sousuke’s voice when he is pulling a prank on Rin. This voice is new, and Rin feels like it can make his brain shut down if he continues to use it.

Rin nods, understanding what Sousuke is asking for without words, and he gasps lowly when his friend starts to move his hips against him.

It takes no time for his own body to react like Sousuke’s, with the movements against him becoming each time more tortuous, and soon Rin is also moving in search of release.

This sensation is anything but new. Rin knows exactly what is happening with him as he has engaged in these sensations by himself before in the privacy of the bathroom or his bedroom when he is alone. Nonetheless this feels the same and yet so different at the same time. It’s different because he isn’t alone this time, Sousuke is with him feeling the same shocks and the same magma burning them.

“So—Sousuke,” he tries to call his friend. He doesn’t recognize his own voice, ragged and heavy, full of yearning.

Sousuke must have translated his call, because in a second his lips are over Rin’s, causing his mind to turn white in bliss with his release. Sousuke breaks the kiss, his eyes looking directly to Rin while the boy is trembling.

Rin has already experienced this peak multiple times. He knows very well what his body is doing and why it happened. But, again, it feels so different and Rin is sure it’s because Sousuke is there with him, because his hands are over Rin’s body, because Rin’s hands are on Sousuke.

He is brought back to Earth when Sousuke kisses him again, rougher, moving his hips more quickly against him to also reach that peak of pleasure. Rin’s hands tighten his fists on Sousuke’s pajamas, on his back, feeling hot and sensitive as Sousuke uses his body to release himself.

Breaking the kiss, Rin whispers against the boy’s ear, “Sousuke!...”

Sousuke stops moving, shuddering and embracing Rin even harder; he puts his mouth against Rin’s shoulder to muffle his voice as he finishes inside his pants.

Both boys stay still, only his heavy breathes are heard in the room. Rin’s body is hot and breathless, as if he has stayed in the bath for a long time, and it seems his heart has decided to move into his head because that is everything he can hear right now.

“Rin…”

That is, until Sousuke speaks. His voice is back to normal, but the yearning still lingers in his tone. The teal eyes look at the red ones. Sousuke looks agitated, pearls of sweat trailing down his temple. For a moment, Rin wonders if he looks the same. Rin nods immediately when Sousuke licks his lips, receiving a soft kiss that doesn’t burn anymore. It’s soft and calming, slowly soothing the fire inside of Rin’s guts.

But everything changes when the hotness subsides, his body finally coming down to the reality of the winter, and the unpleasant sensation of his dirty underwear.

Rin breaks the kiss, but Sousuke steals a peck before letting him go.

“We should change…” Rin whispers, and Sousuke hums as an answer. Rin doesn’t feel like getting up and confront the coldness outside his bed, but his underwear is starting to seriously feel icky.

They quickly discharge their underwear – Rin taking the mental note of washing his in the morning before anyone else wakes up – deciding to forgo them for the moment. In no time they are again under the blankets, huddled together to keep themselves warm.

Rin feels like he should say something, but he doesn’t know exactly what he could say. Is he supposed to say something about what just happened? But firstly, is this thing now something they will do often? Well, they can’t because Rin is going away in just a few days. Nonetheless, Rin knows he wouldn’t mind repeating this with Sousuke, in fact, he would really like to do this again in the near future if it’s with Sousuke.

“I will miss you.”

Sousuke’s voice is sudden, breaking Rin’s train of thought out of nowhere. Rin worries his lips at Sousuke’s confession, his eyes prickling with the threat of tears.

“I will miss you too,” he replies.

 

 

 

A week later, Sousuke and Rin kiss for the last time in the train station’s bathroom.

Instead of tasting sweet as always, it’s bitter and dark, with tears rolling down Rin’s cheeks, clogged sobs in the throat, and Sousuke’s big hands clenching painfully on Rin’s arms.

The last sight Rin has of Sousuke, is of him on the platform, next to the rest of the Yamazaki family, waving his arms to say goodbye.

Rin looks through the train’s window until the train’s station disappears in the horizon, a definite signal of his life changing for good. Tears fall again from his eyes, just like from Gou’s who is still sobbing, but not from their mother who still has a sad smile on her lips.

“It will be alright,” she says, patting Gou’s red hair, “This is just the beginning, children.”

If the beginning feels like this, Rin thinks, then he isn’t that sure of wanting to see the ending.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd.
> 
> Warning: WWII era racial slurs against Japanese people.

They arrive at New York City two weeks later. The city is horribly cold to the point of making Rin’s fingertips turn red, it’s full of tall buildings that don’t allow looking at the sky freely, and there are tons of people walking everywhere all the time. There are so much people Rin is afraid of getting lost some day.

As his mother had promised, he gets to have his own bedroom in his aunt’s house. It’s a small room where a bed barely fits and has one window. It looks practically abandoned, but Rin guesses he can personalize it with enough time, perhaps some posters, some new books, he can see practically a new side table by his bed.

He leaves his bag over the naked bed, looking through the window to see the neighborhood. From what he saw from the taxi, a lot of Japanese people live close by, so it won’t be hard to make new friends quickly even though he won’t be going to high school for another good month. Rin only hopes there is more young people like him and not only old people.

His aunt’s house is small. It’s a two stories house with two bedrooms – his aunt’s and now his mother and Gou’s, Rin’s new bedroom actually used to be a storage room – in the upper floor, a small kitchen with a small living room, and one bathroom. Rin’s new bedroom is also in the upper floor.

Rin doesn’t have clear memories of his aunt because it’s been a long time since he saw her. She is older than his mother, wears her hair short and she has slight marks of time on her skin. She works as a cook in a local Japanese restaurant. She is a loud woman who always has very strong opinions about everything, but always has the best intentions for the people she loves – later on Rin discovers the moving was his aunt’s idea – while she tries to take care of everything.

His aunt even got a job for his mother, in the same restaurant as hers, also as a cook. It was a surprise when she told his mother that when they were in the taxi. The woman almost cried right there.

The future already looks bright for his family, and he is happy about it, soon he will begin high school again, after that he will go to College to major in something – he still has to decide in what –, and, somewhere along the way, he will meet with Sousuke again.

Talking about Sousuke…

Rin jumps to the bed, opening his bag to take out a notebook and a pen.

_12/20/1935_

_Sousuke:_

_This is my first letter to you, as I promised!_

_The trip was a pain in the ass, literally, two weeks of sitting around and changing trains isn’t something I would recommend, but we are finally with my aunt. I have my own room now. It’s so small my new bed almost doesn’t fit. I have a window! Sadly, the view isn’t that great._

_New York is fucking huge and there are a lot of people. You would get lost in a second here._

_It’s hard to think about it because I was traveling, but two weeks have already passed over there. How have you been? What have you been doing?_

Rin stops writing when his words get blurry, blinking multiple times to prevent any accidental tear from falling on the paper.

He also resists the temptation of asking Sousuke if he misses him like he said he would.

_I’m getting in a new high school. I don’t know what to expect of it, but I don’t think it will be that hard to talk with other people. The English lessons will finally do something useful for me._

_I’ll be waiting for your reply._

_Rin._

He closes the notebook. Tomorrow in the morning he will go to the post office to send it immediately.

 

 

_12/31/1935_

_Rin:_

_Happy holidays._

_I wrote this letter as soon as I got yours. I see you wrote yours on the 20th but I got it only today._

_Nothing much has happened in here, I guess. The city is still the same. But I guess I get bored more easily now. No one wants to race against me because they know I’ll win, which sucks because the city is boring as fuck._

_I’m fine, but I don’t have anything interesting to say…_

_Send me a postcard of the city next time you write._

_Sousuke._

_P.S. I remembered something. I saw a squirrel put a whole nut in its mouth on one go._

_03/01/1936_

_Sousuke:_

_Do you remember that asshat named Steven I talked about in my previous letter? He fucking tried to make me trip on the street while I was walking. Of course I kicked his ass. I don’t know what fucking problem these whities have with me, but it’s annoying as fuck. I’m glad my school is Japanese-only because I wouldn’t be able to work with whities._

_And this Steven! UGH! He and his gang of assholes are so annoying, it’s like they are especially after me. Steven should take care of his own ass because this isn’t the first time I send him crying to his poor mom._

_By the way, Gou told me to say hello to you, and my mom sends you her regards._

_Say hello to your family for me. Damn, I miss your mom’s tonkatsu. Hers is the best but don’t tell my mom or she will actually kill me._

_Rin._

_05/22/1936_

_Rin:_

_I don’t know how you are able to write so much in your letters. I always have trouble with this because I don’t know what to write to you._

_I’m fine. The city is the same. The weather is hot. I’m doing my homework as always. I’m very bored._

_I was remembering that time you tried to climb that tree but you fell on your ass. That was funny._

_Sousuke._

_P.S. Miyamoto Miki from my class asked me to be her boyfriend. I said no._

_09/05/1936_

_Sousuke:_

_Happy birthday!_

_I know I wrote this letter way before than your actual birthday but it will probably arrive around that day, isn’t it? Anyway, seventeen already! You are almost a man now._

_Wish I could send you a gift, but I can’t, so you will have to take the postcard I added in the letter as one. It’s a photo of the Statue of Liberty. The other day my aunt took Gou, mom and me to see it but we couldn’t go up because it’s closed. It’s being renovated; I guess I’ll have to wait for it to open again._

_Ah, I bought this new magazine about swimming! Man, I wish I could swim again, but around here the pools won’t let me in. Not even the beaches are a free space! It makes me so angry I wanna punch someone. Maybe Steven will try some shit tomorrow and then I’ll have an excuse to punch him._

_I miss the beach back home._

_Rin._

_09/16/1936_

_I miss you._

_09/29/1936_

_I miss you too._

_02/02/1937_

_Happy birthday, Rin._

_Now you are seventeen years old. And it’s just a year until you finish high school._

_Have you decided what are you going to do?_

_Sousuke._

_08/16/1937_

_Sousuke:_

_I started to hang out with these guys I met at school. They are cool, we get along, tho they are a little older than me, but that doesn’t matter, we aren’t that different. Except there’s this guy who won’t stop eating gum LOUDLY. He gets on my nerves sometimes with that shit._

_Gou wanted to start high school next year, but my mom didn’t allow her saying she should start looking for a husband already. Gou was so mad at her she asked me to let her sleep in my room for a while. I think they are talking again, but I don’t know what happened about Gou’s school._

_I see white chicks going to high school for girls all the time, but I don’t know if there are any high schools for Japanese girls around here… I guess there are not, because I’m pretty sure Gou would already have gone to one by herself. She one time said she doesn’t wanna get married and my mother almost passed out. My aunt agreed with Gou._

_Gou would be safer with a husband, I think, but the idea of her marrying some guy makes me irk. I don’t think someone could protect her like I do. I mean, she already has some guys behind her but they are so disgusting ugh, they don’t even let her talk._

_Rin._

_11/03/1937_

_Rin:_

_I told my mom and dad about my decision to join the army. They weren’t excited about it but they eventually accepted it, or at least I think they do?_

_My mom cried a lot, not that I blame her. She said I was supposed to be successful, not to throw away my life for a country that doesn’t even like me fully._

_It’s curious. I was born here and yet my parents still doesn’t think of this place as home._

_Sousuke._

_P.S. Have you decided what are you going to do after high school?_

_02/06/1938_

_Sousuke:_

_Thanks for the birthday card! I really liked it._

_The final high school push is here, fuck yeah.  I’m itchy to finally finish school._

_Hey, remember Mochizuki, one of the guys I’m friends with from school? Well, the little bastard kind of betrayed our group when he talked with his girlfriend about what we did a few months ago. Remember? When I told you the guys and I went to paper Steven’s house hahahaha. Well, he told his girlfriend! He wasn’t supposed to do that! Like, ok, I told you, but that’s different! You are miles away anyway…_

_So, as I was saying, Mochizuki betrayed our pact of silence so we confronted him, right? But do you know what that asshole tried to do? He tried to fucking punch me. ME!!_

_Did he really think he could go against me? It makes me laugh._

_Anyway, after I kicked his ass, my other two guys (Hamasaki and Yoshida) said we should totally create a group where I, yours truly, will be the leader. Can you imagine? I can be the leader of a new group! I gotta think of a name now. It has to be powerful, of course, threatening so when other people hear it starts to tremble! Man, I’m sounding as if I’m gonna open up a gang hahahaha._

_Rin._

_06/15/1938_

_Rin:_

_This will be the last letter I write to you._

_I’m about to begin my basic training in the army, and I can’t have contact with people who isn’t my immediate family._

_Will you wait for me?_

_Sousuke._

_06/30/1938_

_I will wait._

Humanity is such a fragile thing.

Humanity doesn’t have control over anything, it doesn’t matter how hard it tries to gain at least a little bit of it, humanity simply can’t. That is because humanity is part of something bigger, something way more wide and impressive than its tiny existence.

It’s for this that time loves to play around with humanity.

One minute can feel like a lifetime, one day like an eternity, but at the end of the week it feels like just a blink of an eye.

New York City in January is cold.

The city becomes numb and gray under the thick layers of clouds that refuse to let the warm sun to peek a little into this land, preventing the warmth from gracing people’s lives because, perhaps, the clouds are judgmental and deem the city unworthy of being blessed by the astral body. This cold it’s a type of cold that creeps inside the body, dancing and caressing through the bones and veins, invading the blood to never leave its victim. It’s a type of cold that depresses, that makes the heart go numb and palpitate slowly because it feels it’s useless to do so.

Sometimes it’s so cold that the sky starts to cry. White, cold feathers of snow fall from the dark clouds to curse everything it touches with its frozen claws.

 “Fucking shit.”

Matsuoka Rin, twenty years old, hates this type of cold.

It’s almost 10 PM and Rin is just going back home, tired from a day of work at the warehouse close to the port. His lips are chapped thanks to the cold and licking them isn’t doing anything to make it better, he should have listened to Gou when she offered him her chapstick, plus his hands are killing him with how cold they are inside his baseball jacket’s pockets. He can’t wait to arrive home to finally eat something warm and enjoy a hot bath of at least one hour. Rin thinks he deserves it.

He turns around in a corner, giddy to discover he is almost in the warmth of his house with home-cooked food. Rin even considers starting to jog to go more quickly, but his feet don’t feel like cooperating because they are fucking frozen. Wearing his black converse to work wasn’t the brightest idea, Rin must admit, but he worked so hard to buy these that he can’t help it when he wants to wear them everywhere.

“Hey, Jap!”

Someone yells behind him, making Rin roll his eyes so hard his mother would reprimand him – telling him that if he continues to do that, his eyes will get stuck. Rin recognizes that voice immediately, stopping his walk to turn behind him.

“Steven, really?” He asks to the man walking towards him. Steven is accompanied by his two eternal accomplices that Rin doesn’t even bother to remember their names. White people look all the same to him.

“Why are you here all alone, Jap?” Steven replies instead, “Are you going to meet your other Jap friends to plan something?”

“I bet this Jap right here is a secret spy,” one of Steven’s dogs says.

Rin simply sighs profoundly, tired. He is used to white people calling him names all the time, or trying to belittle him because of his Japanese roots, but this “Jap” name is a new one. It all started with the recent attack of Pearl Harbor, with a newspaper that used it for one article and suddenly everyone everywhere are using it.

“Whatever, Steven,” Rin says, “It’s too late for this shit, I gotta go home.”

He turns around to leave, but a strong hand grabs him by the arm. It’s Steven who refuses to let him go.

“What is it, Jap? Are you afraid of getting your yellow ass kicked?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve kicked your pasty ass so many times I had to buy new shoes because my old ones started to smell like you.”

For a single moment, his red eyes look down to focus on something new in Steven’s jacket. It’s a button with the legend “Jap Hunter”. Oh, fucking great.

Of course this asshole would get into that shit.

Without waiting a second, Rin punches Steven in the face, throwing him away from him. One of Steven’s men tries to punch Rin, but he easily dodges it. He wasn’t kidding when he said he has kicked Steven – and his henchmen – multiple times. In the past eight years of Rin living in this city, Steven has made it his goal to be an annoying little shit in Rin’s life. For some reason, Steven can’t simply accept that Rin is stronger than him. Rin suspects it’s because Steven is a racist asshole.

Rin punches the second man in the stomach after dodging him, and immediately kicks the third one when he sees him coming closer.

“You fucking Jap!” Steven yells when he stands up, taking something out of his pocket.

Silver shines when the pocketknife touches the dim light streets. Rin’s eyes widen at it. This is new.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Rin says, walking back slowly.

“Ha! Not so brave now, are you, Jap?” Steven answers, following Rin in his steps. “I’m gonna fucking kill you. One Jap less, who would care? No one! You all look the same, anyway.”

Rin isn’t weak. He knows he is strong and can fight. Rin can defend himself like he has done multiple times already in his life. But this, this situation right here, it’s more than new.

It’s terrifying.

He decides to run for it, turning around as quickly as he can and going down the alley as fast as his frozen feet allow him, but it’s too soon when he feels the cold concrete hitting his chest when something heavy falls over him. It’s one of Steven’s men who tackled him down, refusing to let go. The other man grabs him by the arms, dragging him through the floor, and immobilizing him completely when the one who tackled him grabs his legs.

“Let me go, you fuckers!” Rin yells, trying to kick the man holding down his legs.

“Keep him down!” Steven orders, moving quickly to him, “This is going to be nice and easy.”

The silver shine from the pocketknife brightens Rin’s red eyes, hypnotizing and impossible to ignore now that it’s so close to him.

His thoughts go immediately to his mother and Gou. Who is going to protect them now? Who is going to massage his mother’s shoulders when she is tired? Who is going to keep horrible men away from Gou?

Rin closes his eyes when his sight gets blurry with tears.

But he opens them when he hears Steven scream.

Steven isn’t over him anymore, he is lying painfully on the floor some meters away as if an invisible force had thrown him away. The pocketknife is nowhere to be seen. His arms and legs are released when the two men run towards a third man. The man is tall, almost a head taller than Rin, broad and evidently strong when he easily overpowers the two men against him with a really painful-looking self-defense tactic against them.

The three white men get on their feet, looking at the taller man with clear fear in their eyes.

“You fucking Jap!” Steven yells as he runs away, closely followed by his henchmen.

Rin sighs, closing his eyes and resting his head on the floor. The adrenaline still rushes through his veins, making him feel jittery and anxious.

“Are you alright?” A deep voice asks in the middle of the darkness of his eyelids, most likely to him.

“Yes, thanks.”

He opens his eyes to find a big hand offered to him, which he takes to stand up. Rin is easily pulled up. Shit, this man is really strong.

“Thanks again,” he says, trying to take his hand back but is surprised when the man won’t let go. Great. He got out of a problem to step right into another. “Hey, man, what’s the—“

His lips are open but not a single word comes out of them when he sees black hair, tanned skin, and – the most important thing – teal eyes that look at him with the light of recognition.

“Rin?” The man asks.

Rin knows he should probably say something, but his brain doesn’t seem to function correctly because he can’t find any words that could translate what he is feeling; this wild sensation of his heart trying to break his ribcage to run far away, this explosive feeling destroying his insides like a bomb. So, he says the only thing he can think of at that second.

“Sousuke.”

From all the moments they could have reunited, destiny chooses to cross their paths like this, with Rin seconds away from dying. How curious that thing, destiny, is. What are the probabilities of Sousuke walking down this alley? What are the probabilities of Sousuke deciding to help a random stranger in the street? What are the probabilities of Sousuke finding Rin like this?

It’s amazing, it’s impressive, and Rin can barely believe it.

“Sousuke, it’s really you!” Rin yells with a loud laugh, his tongue easily going back to his mother language. “I can’t fucking believe it! Look at you!”

Rin hits Sousuke on the shoulder, and the man simply chuckles at him.

“Same to you, Rin,” Sousuke replies, “When I threw away those guys I didn’t think it would be to save your sorry ass.”

Rin blushes a little, imagining what a lousy scene it should have been.

“That fucking Steven pulled a pocketknife at me!” He tries to defend his honor, “Of course I wasn’t gonna stay here and try to fight it!”

“Ah, that was Steven?”

Something inside of Rin’s stomach jumps. It’s a giddy jump, a happy hop, full of joy and sunshine. It’s embarrassing, but Rin knows it’s because Sousuke remembers something he wrote so long ago.

“Yeah, he continues to be an ass, what a surprise.” Rin rolls his eyes. “But hey! Forget about that! What are you doing here? Oh, wait, my home is close by. You gotta come with me! Mom and Gou will be happy to see you!”

Sousuke thankfully accepts the invitation with a smile, following Rin back home.

Walking side by side, Rin thinks it’s impressive how easily they went back to their old rhythm. It almost feels like they hadn’t disappeared from each other’s lives for the past five years. It feels normal and familiar, walking like this with Sousuke while hearing his voice as he tells his history. Not even the freezing cold of his hands can bother him anymore.

He tells Sousuke about his job at the warehouse, about how he couldn’t continue with his education because money is tight in their house

Right now Sousuke is on what the army calls “Leave”, which is a permission to “take a vacation” from the unit he belongs to, and decided to come to New York City.

“Though Japanese-American soldiers are in ‘obligatory leave’ right now,” Sousuke explains, glancing towards Rin for a second, “You know, war against Japan and all.”

Rin groans. “That’s stupid as fuck, if you ask me,” he gives his opinion. Sousuke chuckles.

“Yeah, it is.”

“I mean, ok, we have Japanese roots, but we have lived here our whole lives! Why the fuck would we be loyal to a country we don’t even know?”

“I don’t remember you having such a dirty mouth, Rin,” Sousuke jokes.

“Well, I don’t remember you being this fucking huge,” Rin snarks back, hitting Sousuke in an arm, “Look at this! You could kill someone with this.”

Rin pokes Sousuke’s arm, covered with a thick jacket that makes Rin wonder how Sousuke even got inside of it, as it hugs his body.

“Five years in the army do things to you, I guess,” Sousuke explains.

When Rin is about to complain about Sousuke not confirming his affirmation of killing someone, he gets distracted when he sees his house at the end of the road.

“Ah! That’s my house! C’mon, hurry up. My ass is getting frozen out here,” Rin quickens his steps, leaving Sousuke a little behind.

“Your ass seems fine to me.”

Rin stops dry, looking behind him to stare at Sousuke, finding that the teal eyes aren’t looking at him but at the road in front of them. Rin keeps looking at the other man even as the latter passes by him, in the direction of the mentioned home.

Just how back did they go in their old rhythm? Rin wonders.

Gulping down the knot inside his throat, Rin continues walking and speaking, “This fine ass was just recently dragged in the freezing concrete so I would much appreciate to sit down in my house.”

They arrive at the front door in a matter of minutes. Rin unlocks the door and announces he has arrived, his mother replies from the side. By the lingering smell of food in the air, Rin guesses the woman is reheating his portion of dinner. A smile creeps on his lips.

“Mom! I found a dog and it followed me home!” He yells, nudging Sousuke on the ribs, winking at him to follow along. “Can I keep it?”

Soft steps coming their way are heard, and a woman of red hair and a few white strands appears in the doorframe to the kitchen, her hands are busy with a cleaning towel.

“Rin, we have talked about this millions of times, your aunt doesn’t want—“

Her eyes go wide open as she sees Rin and his companion, completely taken back when there is no dog in sight but a tall man of black hair and teal eyes.

“Surprise!” Rin yells, his arms are in the air.

“Sousuke-kun, is it really you?!” Rin’s mother takes a few cautionary steps, not really believing her eyes.

“Good evening, Matsuoka-san,” his friend salutes, slightly bowing.

“Goodness! You got so big!”

“That’s what I told him!” Rin shares.

“What’s going on?” A third voice comes along from the stairs. It’s Gou, who stops midway downstairs as soon as she sees the guest. His sister Gou has really grown up, her red hair is long and fixed in a ponytail this night. “Sousuke-kun?!”

“Hey, Gou.”

“You are so tall!”

Rin loudly laughs. With all the commotion, the last member of the family, Rin’s aunt, comes around. Rin quickly presents Sousuke to her and, of course, her first idea is to comment on how tall Sousuke is. After that, his mother invites Sousuke to dinner, which he accepts, so they all sit around the table, conversing about everything they have done and questioning Sousuke in what he has done. He repeats the same story he told Rin a few minutes ago. Before anyone realizes it, the clock marks the midnight.

“Oh, dear,” Rin’s mother comments, covering her mouth, “It’s gotten so late, sorry for distracting you, Sousuke-kun.”

“It’s no problem, Matsuoka-san, I was delighted to taste your food once again,” the man replies, cleaning the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

“Oh, you!” The woman amicably slaps Sousuke in the shoulder. 

“But I should go now, my motel is a bit far away from here,” he says, leaving the tissue on the table.

“Motel?” Rin’s aunt repeats, “Nonsense! You are going to freeze if you go out there right now. You can stay the night.”

“Yeah!” Rin agrees, “In my room, like old times. And I don’t have to work until the evening, so it’s alright.”

Seeing all the pressure, Sousuke accepts with a smile. Rin offers to wash the dishes, and Sousuke stands up to help him while the rest of the house says farewell to go to sleep. Rin is soaping a plate when Sousuke starts speaking.

“You and your family have changed,” he says.

Rin arches an eyebrow at him. What is that supposed to mean? Rin doesn’t feel different at all. He guesses he has changed, but doesn’t everyone change with time? It’s been five years since the last time they communicated, and it’s been almost ten years since last time they saw each other in person. It’s normal to change a little, but Rin is still curious as to why Sousuke would mention it now, or what made Sousuke think like that.

Perhaps Sousuke had certain expectations about his friend. Maybe Sousuke was waiting for Rin to stay the same, though that obviously is impossible.

“Changed how?” He decides to ask when he sees Sousuke won’t elaborate.

“You talk like a real New Yorker,” Sousuke laughs as he says this, louder when Rin uses his heel to kick him in the shin. “And your mother seems to be more… awake, so to say.”

“To that, I agree,” Rin replies, smiling softly. His eyes are fixed on the soapy water, determined to get rid of a really stubborn spot on a plate. “Since she started working in this city, she seems more content with herself. Now she has the same look in her eyes as your mother.”

Sousuke hums, rinsing a plate Rin just gave him. “My mother still works with my father at the farm. I was with them just last week.”

“I still miss your mom’s tonkatsu.”

The taller man laughs. “She misses you and your family.”

Rin smiles at the memories of endless evenings at the Yamazaki’s house invading his mind. That house was practically his second home, he knew it like the palm of his hand, and he had tons of fun in there. Sousuke’s parents were always busy with work, but they still tried their hardest to spend time with their boy when possible. They were strict, like any other parent worried for their children’s future, and the result of their diligent education is this man standing next to Rin.

Sousuke is now a soldier, dedicated to serve his country, disciplined and correct.

“You have changed too, Sousuke,” Rin comments, removing the tap from the sink to drain the dirty water, and taking a towel to dry his hands.

“Five years in the army does things to you,” Sousuke replies, accepting the towel when Rin offers it to him.

“Yeah, you said that already. C’mon, my room is upstairs.”

They go upstairs, Rin takes out a futon from the closet in the hallway beforehand, and soon they enter Rin’s room. The place has changed a lot with time. The wall now is painted with white and yellow vertical bars, and basketball posters are carefully plastered on it, he has a drawer for his clothes, and next to his bed is a side table with an electric clock – red numbers in it mark that it’s almost 1 AM already – and a lamp. Rin lays down the futon, settling it in the remaining space of his floor which, truth be said, isn’t that much with the bed occupying most of it.

“I don’t think my clothes are gonna fit you, tho,” Rin says, looking through his drawer for his biggest t-shirt.

“Don’t worry. I can sleep in my clothes.”

“Ew, no! That’s dirty!” Rin wrinkles his nose at his friend, who laughs at him.

“Maybe you didn’t change that much, after all.”

In the end, Rin lends Sousuke a pair of sleeping pants that doesn’t cover his legs to his ankles, and a long-sleeve t-shirt that it’s a tight fit for his body. He changes into his pajamas and hops to the bed after turning off the light – leaving the lamp on the side table on. Sousuke sits down on the futon, looking at Rin.

“You won’t invite me to your bed like you used to do when we were kids?” Sousuke asks, smirking.

“Yeah, right.” Rin pushes him on the shoulder with a foot, laughing, “You are huge, no way you would fit in here with me, ass.”

“You would in the futon with me.”

Rin falls silent, his red eyes never leaving the teal ones.

Sometimes it feels like time didn’t cross between them, they continue to joke around and to pull each other’s hair, they play as if almost ten years didn’t put them apart. And yet sometimes, like right now, Rin feels like something has changed between them. The curious part is that it feels different but at the same time it feels so familiar; the knot in his stomach, his fretting hands, his heart beating strongly and painfully in his chest. It’s strangely familiar, and Rin perfectly knows why.

But that was a long time ago, when none of them understood what they were doing and just kept at it because it felt nice.

Rin wonders if it would feel just as nice now.

“That may be,” Rin finally responds when he finds his voice again, “But if I remember correctly you are a blanket thief, so no thanks.”

He ends his line with a grin. Relief bathes his troubled thoughts when Sousuke laughs.

“Me? You were the one who used to leave me all cold at night.”

“Like this neither of us will suffer from cold, then,” Rin concludes, finally turning off the lamp.

After that none of them speaks, each of them getting ready to sleep.

Rin’s heart is behaving like a scared rabbit; anxious, jittery, full of adrenaline that he doesn’t know how to use to free it. He ends up falling asleep to the sound of his and Sousuke’s breathes.

The next day, Rin is surprised to find Sousuke still soundly asleep, with his facial features relaxed as his wide chest goes up and down with each breath. Pale sunlight bathes Sousuke on the floor, entering through the window, meaning that it isn’t that late in the morning. A quick check to the clock confirms his suspicions, as it marks it’s barely 7 AM.

“Aren’t soldiers supposed to wake up with the sun?...” Rin mumbles, amused, looking at his friend’s sleeping face.

Tip-toeing, Rin gets out of the room in direction to the bathroom. He regrets it immediately when the cold of the winter caresses his skin without mercy, but his bladder is screaming for sweet release at this point. After using the toilet and washing his hands, Rin goes to the kitchen for something to drink, finding his mother there drinking hot tea, sitting at the small table while her eyes are lost through the window; she is already showered and dressed to start the day.

“’Morning,” Rin greets. The woman looks at him, and smiles, greeting him back. “What are you doing here by yourself? I thought your turn at work was until later.”

“Yes, it is in a few hours,” she responds, looking at her cup and gently smiling, “But I was thinking.”

He decides to sit down with his mother, looking at her. Something inside of him tells him the woman needs to talk.

“Thinking about what?” He asks to prompt his mother.

“About how much time has passed.”

The answer is unexpected, to say the least, for a moment Rin was worried about money issues, but it seems that, today, this isn’t the problem. It indeed has passed a lot of time, it’s almost unbelievable. They didn’t realize it because time it’s like that, silent like a cat until it meows with a loud reminder of its existence, and Rin doesn’t have to ponder much as of what was the reminder this time.

Sousuke’s return was too sudden. A bite from the past in the present to remind them all of how much time has passed without them being able to control any of it.

Perhaps none of them noticed it at first because they got used to each other quickly, every single change on them imperceptible due to everyday contact, but Sousuke arrived from the other side of the country where time passed just as much as with them, with his big body, deep voice and controlled behavior.

Sousuke himself told Rin about how much the redhead has changed, so Sousuke also is victim of time’s cruel reminder of how much has it run while no one was paying attention.

“Sousuke has really changed, right?” He says.

“We all have changed, Rin,” she replies before drinking from her cup, “The question is… have we changed for the better?”

There is a cloud of doubt covering his mother’s red eyes, filling them with muddy uncertainty that Rin wishes to clean off immediately.

“I’m sure we have changed for the better, mom,” he assures quickly to not let the woman before him fall into a dark pit, “At least I know **you** have changed for the better.”

At the compliment, the woman smiles slightly, content with his words.

“Sometimes I wonder if you and Gou are still mad with me,” she confesses.

Rin opens his mouth but no words go out of it because he doesn’t know what to say. Mad at her? About what? And has she been asking herself that since when?

“What are you talking about?” He decides to ask, surprised. His mother sighs, but her smile doesn’t disappear.

“For moving all the way here from home.”

The man feels guilty all of the sudden. All this time his mother has been suffering in silence, believing her son and daughter are mad at her for something neither of them could control. He admits that at first he was mad, rage and anger filling his insides like hot fire, but he never was mad at his mother because he understood that she took the decision for the better, and he is sure Gou is just the same as him.

“Of course not, mom. Don’t be silly,” Rin finally replies, leaning towards the woman to be closer to her, “We were never mad at you. Both Gou and I know you did what you could to protect us and take care of us.”

His mother just nods, still not gazing away from her cup of tea that isn’t as steamy as it used to be, before speaking. “Thank you, Rin. I think I will ask Gou about it.”

“Yeah, being straight and direct about these things is the best course of action, mom.”

The woman finally looks up to him, smiling a little more sincerely now. Rin guesses she won’t be 100% alright until she speaks with Gou, so he decides to let it go for now.

“I better go back to my room, for when Sousuke wakes up.”

He stands up as the woman hums, patting her shoulder gently as he exits the room. In no time he is back in his bedroom, finding Sousuke standing up in the middle of the tiny room – looking a little ridiculous with his huge form. The man is looking through the window, seemingly lost in thought because he doesn’t greet Rin when he enters.

“’Morning,” Rin decides to say to call Sousuke’s attention. It works, making the soldier turn around and offer a smile to Rin.

“Good morning,” Sousuke replies, “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Rin grins at his friend, before speaking, “You looked really comfortable down there. I didn’t have the heart.”

He goes to his drawer, taking out clean clothes for a shower. “Do you wanna shower here?”

“No, thanks, I better go back to my motel now,” Sousuke says, moving his neck to crack it. Rin winces at the sound, but he guesses his friend likes it. “I don’t have clean clothes with me, anyway.”

“At least wash your face so you don’t look so dead,” Rin jokes, “C’mon, I’ll show you the bathroom.”

Once they are inside the tiny bathroom – with Sousuke taking a lot of space – the soldier washes his face promptly, wetting his hair to remove any sign of sleep from it. In the meantime, Rin turns on the shower to let the water heat up and then he sits on the toilet’s seat, looking attentively to his companion.

“So…” Rin starts, “What are your plans now?”

“What do you mean?” Sousuke asks back, grabbing the face-towel to dry himself.

“Yeah, how long are you gonna stay in NYC? And what are you going to do?”

Instead of responding, Sousuke prolongs his silence, looking at himself in the mirror that has golden edges, releasing a deep breath after a few seconds.

“I don’t know,” Sousuke confesses, “I honestly came here without a serious plan, I just thought that maybe—“

Sousuke stops talking suddenly, and only the sound of the shower covers their ears, starting to make Rin feel a little anxious without a real reason.

“I just thought that maybe I would find something to do here,” Sousuke finishes.

Is it Rin’s imagination, or Sousuke looks lost?

It’s a sad thing to see, talking with honesty, seeing Sousuke without a clear goal for something so simple. Why on Earth did Sousuke decide to come all the way to NYC without a real reason? Did he seriously just get on an airplane or something, and traveled from their hometown to NYC “just because”? That is absurd. Sousuke may have changed in these past ten years, but Rin is sure Sousuke isn’t reckless like this.

“Well, thankfully you found me,” Rin declares, standing up once he sees steam coming out of the shower, “I can show you around the city today, at least until I have to get to work. Just let me shower quickly.”

Sousuke smiles, warming Rin’s chest in a weird – and yet nostalgic – way.

“Sure,” the man replies as he steps out of the bathroom.

Rin showers quickly, realizing his stomach is a mess of feelings all mixed up; excitement, nostalgia, and anxiety are dancing inside of his guts in a really ugly waltz to a really ugly song, but he can’t do anything about it when he is looking forward to hang out with his childhood friend. By the time he is back in his bedroom, Sousuke is already dressed in his clothes, sitting on Rin’s bed while reading some magazine Rin remembers leaving on the side table. His bed is done and the futon is neatly folded on it, meaning that Sousuke is the one who cleaned up.

“The plan is this,” Rin begins, sitting next to Sousuke who leaves the magazine forgotten again on the side table, “We will go to your motel so you can shower and stop being disgusting, and then I’ll take you to a place where we can have breakfast.”

A snort comes out of Sousuke lips, apparently finding Rin’s plan funny to some degree, before replying, “Ok, yeah, sure. But it’s funny how you freak out about me being dirty.”

Sousuke stands up, Rin following him closely. “I find it surprising you don’t care that much in the first place.”

“Five years in the army do things to you,” Sousuke says.

“Sousuke, stop with that. It stopped being funny the first three times.”

After bidding farewells to Rin’s mom and aunt, they both go out of the house.

Winter mornings in NYC are always the same. The sky is full of gray clouds that don’t allow the sunlight to be bright, the air is cold and humid hurting Rin’s skin every time it touches him, and it’s full of people going everywhere because NYC never stops breathing.

Rin laughs at Sousuke when the latter tells him he now believed him when he wrote – all those years ago – how Sousuke would get lost in NYC because of how huge and crowded the city is. But Rin doesn’t have that problem, after ten years of living in here he can easily know his way masterfully without a problem, so he guides them both though streets and alleys until they arrive to Sousuke’s motel, a comfortable little place that, thankfully, actually looks decent and clean; much to Rin’s delight.

Once they enter Sousuke’s room, the man takes clean clothes and goes to the bathroom for a quick shower, instructing Rin to wait for him and turn on the TV if he wanted; instead of doing that, Rin simply sits down on the bed, staring at Sousuke’s suitcase. He is surprised to discover the baggage is kind of big. Rin frowns. That could only mean that Sousuke didn’t come without a plan, his suitcase suggests he is planning to stay for a long time, contrary to what Sousuke made it look like back in the bathroom when Rin asked him.

Rin would understand a short-period trip to NYC, with it being a touristic city and all, without a plan but this evidently isn’t something short.

He can’t ponder on it too much, as Sousuke exits the bathroom all clean and refreshed wearing new clothes.

“I’m ready,” Sousuke announces.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a one-shot but then it got ridiculously long.
> 
> Sorry.
> 
> Find me at [AleishaDreams](http:www.aleishadreams.tumblr.com) and [ActualAleisha](http:www.twitter.com/actualaleisha).


End file.
